Inkjet-Printed Human Body Temperature Sensor for Wearable Electronics

Shawkat Ali,Saleem Khan,Amine Bermak

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2949335

Abstract

This paper presents an all-printed human body temperature sensor developed on a plastic substrate with high deformation characteristics. The sensors are developed on $50~\mu \text{m}$ thick Kapton substrate with structural configuration of silver interdigital electrodes (IDEs) fabricated through inkjet material printer DMP 2850 and the sensing film based on carbon black deposited through doctor blade coating. Interdigital distance of the IDEs were optimized by evaluating sensors’ performance against changing the fingers spacing within a close range of 0.1–1 mm. Good sensitivity i.e. 0.00375 °C −1 is achieved at a temperature range of 28 to 50 °C with response and recovery times of 4 and 8.5 sec, respectively. Robustness of the sensor was also evaluated for a period of 50 days and a negligible drift ( $1\Omega$ ) in the base resistance was recorded. The sensor exhibited bendability down to 5 mm and was also characterized for the chemical and electrical properties i.e. resistance variation, surface morphology and Raman shift analysis of the carbon black. This wearable sensor can potentially be applied on human body for continuous temperature monitoring as well as on the artificial skin for social and industrial robotic applications.

Highlights

Printed werable sensors for monitoring of vital biosignals, such as body temperature, respiration rate, blood pressure, glucose and electrophysiology have attracted tremendous interest in the biomedical research community [1]–[5]
We propose a human body temperature sensor fabricated through inkjet material printer at room temperature in two steps deposition process
The proposed sensor consists of silver based interdigital electrode and carbon black film as sensing element, which are sensitive towards human body temperature

Summary

Introduction

Printed werable sensors for monitoring of vital biosignals, such as body temperature, respiration rate, blood pressure, glucose and electrophysiology have attracted tremendous interest in the biomedical research community [1]–[5]. S. Ali et al.: Inkjet-Printed Human Body Temperature Sensor for Wearable Electronics electronics manufacturing due to the attractive features such as simplicity, affordability, speed, adaptability to the fabrication process, reduced material wastage, high resolution of patterns and easy control by adjusting few printng parameters [11], [16]–[22]. We propose a human body temperature sensor fabricated through inkjet material printer at room temperature in two steps deposition process.

Results

Conclusion