(Invited) Wearable Printed Pressure Sensors with Ferroelectric Polymer for Healthcare Applications

Abstract

<Introduction> Flexible printed organic electronics have various advantages over conventional inorganic electronics. These organic devices such as sensors and actuators can be fabricated on a plastic thin-film substrate with low-temperature printing processes[1,2]. Especially, physical sensors based on a ferroelectric polymer have a great potential in the development of wearable and disposable health-care devices such as pressure sensors. As the ferroelectric polymer for the sensors, poly(vinylidene difluoride trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF–TrFE)] (Piezotech, 62-010, VDF:TrFE molar ratio of 75:25) is the most promising material because of high ferroelectricity and piezoelectricity[3]). Moreover, the P(VDF–TrFE) is compatible with printing processes because of its solubility in several organic solvents[4,5]. <Results and Discussions> A representative printed physical sensor based on P(VDF–TrFE) was fabricated on a flexible plastic film substrate by screen printing method. PEDOT:PSS (Heraeus, Clevios SV 4 Stab) was used for the top and bottom electrodes. Thicknesses of the P(VDF–TrFE) layer and the electrodes were 2 µm and 1 µm, respectively. The P(VDF–TrFE) layer could generate the voltage of 50 mV by applied pressure of 50 kPa[5]. The generated voltage clearly depended on the thickness of P(VDF–TrFE) layer. Our printed sensor exhibited high sensitivity in the low pressure region, which is indicating the potential application to wearable sensors which monitoring health condition of human. In order to monitor the health condition of a volunteer, the sensor was attached to the skin near the neck using a skin-compatible adhesive patch. We have succeeded in the detection of the pulse rate with 55 pulse per minute. These results indicate that our P(VDF–TrFE) based sensor is significantly promising for wearable health-care applications. The detection of the pulse rate from volunteer was authorized by the Ethics Committee of Yamagata University (authorization code: 29-2). <Acknowledgement> This study was partially supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). T. S. would like to thank all member of Research Center for Organic Electronics in Yamagata University, Piezotech and Arkema corporation. <References> [1] K. Fukuda et al., Sci. Rep., 3, 2048 (2013). [2] S. Conti et al., Adv. Mater. Technol., 2, 1600212 (2017). [3] D. Thuau et al., J. Mater. Chem. C, 5, 9963 (2017). [4] G. Knotts et al., Appl. Phys, Lett., 104, 233301 (2014). [5] T. Sekine et al., Sci. Rep., 8, 4442 (2018).