Flexible, high-sensitive, and wearable strain sensor based on organic crystal for human motion detection

Abstract

Abstract A flexible high-sensitive wearable strain sensor has been fabricated based on flexible rubrene single crystal as sensing material. Different from the previously extensively reported thin-film organic field-effect transistor (OFET) based strain sensors, the present sensing system is based on the modulation of the intermolecular distance of organic crystal under strain, and applied the two-terminal device configuration. This new device designed with the simple device configuration exhibits the comparable sensing performance with the conventional thin-film OFET based strain sensors, including high sensitivity (gauge factor = 279), wide detection range, and high cycle stability. Furthermore, the rubrene single-crystal strain sensors can accurately detect the motions of the body, such as swallowing saliva of throat, inside-bending and outside-bending of finger, and multi-angle bending of arm. Such a new-type device design opens a new powerful route to realize ultra-sensitive strain detection for promising applications in artificial intelligence and healthcare systems.