Abstract
Presented is a flexible capacitive strain sensor, based on the low cost materials silicone (PDMS) and carbon black (CB), that was fabricated by casting and curing of successive silicone layers—a central PDMS dielectric layer bounded by PDMS/CB blend electrodes and packaged by exterior PDMS films. It was effectively characterized for large flexion-angle motion wearable applications, with strain sensing properties assessed over large strains (50%) and variations in temperature and humidity. Additionally, suitability for monitoring large tissue deformation was established by integration with an in vitro digestive model. The capacitive gauge factor was approximately constant at 0.86 over these conditions for the linear strain range (3 to 47%). Durability was established from consistent relative capacitance changes over 10,000 strain cycles, with varying strain frequency and elongation up to 50%. Wearability and high flexion angle human motion detection were demonstrated by integration with an elbow band, with clear detection of motion ranges up 90°. The device’s simple structure and fabrication method, low-cost materials and robust performance, offer promise for expanding the availability of wearable sensor systems.
Highlights
With the development of miniaturized and portable computing devices and sensors and burgeoning interest in personalized healthcare and new concepts in human–machine interaction, smart wearable devices [1,2,3] have attracted wide interest because of their potential in health monitoring [4,5], motion tracking [6,7,8,9,10,11] and assessment of in vitro models of gastric motility [12,13]
In this paper we demonstrate how similar materials, in a simple five layer arrangement, can be made effectively at first hand and can be used in a large-strain (50%), durable, low-cost sensor that is suitable for use as a wearable device for monitoring high flexion-angle body motion and large tissue deformation
An approximately 1 mm thick, five-layer, flexible, PDMS based capacitive strain sensor was fabricated by sequential addition and curing of the layers
Summary
With the development of miniaturized and portable computing devices and sensors and burgeoning interest in personalized healthcare and new concepts in human–machine interaction, smart wearable devices [1,2,3] have attracted wide interest because of their potential in health monitoring [4,5], motion tracking [6,7,8,9,10,11] and assessment of in vitro models of gastric motility [12,13]. Electronic skin consisted primarily of non-conductive elastomers and flexible conductive sensing elements. Their sensing mechanisms were relatively simple and were generally divided into two types: Resistive [6,19] and capacitive [20,21,22,23]. Many researchers have pursued development of capacitive electronic skin, with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [6,20,23,24,25], graphene [26,27,28]
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