In this paper, the influence mechanism of shape, structural parameters and material properties on the performance of electric field sensor is systematically studied by combining simulation and experiment. Firstly, the simulation model of spherical and multi-type parallel plate sensor is established. The simulation results show that the spherical structure can significantly reduce the electric field distortion rate because of the symmetry advantage, and the distortion is reduced by 17% compared with the optimal circular parallel plate structure. Secondly, according to the parametric analysis of the spherical sensor, it is found that the increase of radius and plate spacing will aggravate the distortion due to the deterioration of the electric field distribution at the edge, and the high dielectric constant intermediate material will further amplify the distortion through the polarization effect. It is proposed that the structural size is reduced and the low dielectric constant material is selected to optimize the performance. Finally, experimental verification shows that the sensitivity of spherical sensor is 35% higher than that of parallel plate structure under the same induction area.