Stretchable screen-printed metasurfaces for wireless strain sensing applications

Abstract

Metasurfaces have been studied intensively over the past two decades as they offer the advantages of extraordinary electromagnetic characteristics and highly dispersive responses. Furthermore, electrically or optically reconfigurable metasurfaces can dynamically switch their operation or provide diverse functions via control of their electromagnetic responses. Consequently, mechanical transformations of metasurfaces have paved the way for fabrication of physical sensors. Specifically, in this paper, we propose a stretchable metasurface for wireless strain sensor applications. Because of its dispersive characteristic, the proposed metasurface can reject a specific frequency while transmitting all other frequencies. When the metasurface is stretched, its rejection frequency is shifted. Therefore, the proposed metasurface can wirelessly sense the strain level. The stretchable metasurface is implemented by screen printing a stretchable conductor on a stretchable dielectric material. Further, the frequency response of the fabricated metasurface is measured by loading between the transmitting and receiving antennas. The measured modulus of the fabricated sample is 2.07 MPa for a maximum strain of 15%, and its measured sensitivity is 0.085×109 Hz/%.