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Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation

Continuous monitoring of physical motion, which can be successfully achieved via a wireless flexible wearable electronic device, is essential for people to ensure the appropriate level of exercise. Currently, most of the flexible LC pressure sensors have low sensitivity because of the high Young’s m...

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Autores principales: Sun, Zhuqi, Fang, Haoyu, Xu, Baochun, Yang, Lina, Niu, Haoran, Wang, Hongfei, Chen, Da, Liu, Yijian, Wang, Zhuopeng, Wang, Yanyan, Guo, Qiuquan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8399622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34442598
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi12080976
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author Sun, Zhuqi
Fang, Haoyu
Xu, Baochun
Yang, Lina
Niu, Haoran
Wang, Hongfei
Chen, Da
Liu, Yijian
Wang, Zhuopeng
Wang, Yanyan
Guo, Qiuquan
author_facet Sun, Zhuqi
Fang, Haoyu
Xu, Baochun
Yang, Lina
Niu, Haoran
Wang, Hongfei
Chen, Da
Liu, Yijian
Wang, Zhuopeng
Wang, Yanyan
Guo, Qiuquan
author_sort Sun, Zhuqi
collection PubMed
description Continuous monitoring of physical motion, which can be successfully achieved via a wireless flexible wearable electronic device, is essential for people to ensure the appropriate level of exercise. Currently, most of the flexible LC pressure sensors have low sensitivity because of the high Young’s modulus of the dielectric properties (such as PDMS) and the inflexible polymer films (as the substrate of the sensors), which don’t have excellent stretchability to conform to arbitrarily curved and moving surfaces such as joints. In the LC sensing system, the metal rings, as the traditional readout device, are difficult to meet the needs of the portable readout device for the integrated and planar readout antenna. In order to improve the pressure sensitivity of the sensor, the Ecoflex microcolumn used as the dielectric of the capacitive pressure sensor was prepared by using a metal mold copying method. The Ecoflex elastomer substrates enhanced the levels of conformability, which offered improved capabilities to establish intimate contact with the curved and moving surfaces of the skin. The pressure was applied to the sensor by weights, and the resonance frequency curves of the sensor under different pressures were obtained by the readout device connected to the vector network analyzer. The experimental results show that resonant frequency decreases linearly with the increase of applied pressure in a range of 0–23,760 Pa with a high sensitivity of −2.2 MHz/KPa. We designed a coplanar waveguide-fed monopole antenna used to read the information of the LC sensor, which has the potential to be integrated with RF signal processing circuits as a portable readout device and a higher vertical readout distance (up to 4 cm) than the copper ring. The flexible LC pressure sensor can be attached to the skin conformally and is sensitive to limb bending and facial muscle movements. Therefore, it has the potential to be integrated as a body sensor network that can be used to monitor physical motion.
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spelling pubmed-83996222021-08-29 Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation Sun, Zhuqi Fang, Haoyu Xu, Baochun Yang, Lina Niu, Haoran Wang, Hongfei Chen, Da Liu, Yijian Wang, Zhuopeng Wang, Yanyan Guo, Qiuquan Micromachines (Basel) Article Continuous monitoring of physical motion, which can be successfully achieved via a wireless flexible wearable electronic device, is essential for people to ensure the appropriate level of exercise. Currently, most of the flexible LC pressure sensors have low sensitivity because of the high Young’s modulus of the dielectric properties (such as PDMS) and the inflexible polymer films (as the substrate of the sensors), which don’t have excellent stretchability to conform to arbitrarily curved and moving surfaces such as joints. In the LC sensing system, the metal rings, as the traditional readout device, are difficult to meet the needs of the portable readout device for the integrated and planar readout antenna. In order to improve the pressure sensitivity of the sensor, the Ecoflex microcolumn used as the dielectric of the capacitive pressure sensor was prepared by using a metal mold copying method. The Ecoflex elastomer substrates enhanced the levels of conformability, which offered improved capabilities to establish intimate contact with the curved and moving surfaces of the skin. The pressure was applied to the sensor by weights, and the resonance frequency curves of the sensor under different pressures were obtained by the readout device connected to the vector network analyzer. The experimental results show that resonant frequency decreases linearly with the increase of applied pressure in a range of 0–23,760 Pa with a high sensitivity of −2.2 MHz/KPa. We designed a coplanar waveguide-fed monopole antenna used to read the information of the LC sensor, which has the potential to be integrated with RF signal processing circuits as a portable readout device and a higher vertical readout distance (up to 4 cm) than the copper ring. The flexible LC pressure sensor can be attached to the skin conformally and is sensitive to limb bending and facial muscle movements. Therefore, it has the potential to be integrated as a body sensor network that can be used to monitor physical motion. MDPI 2021-08-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8399622/ /pubmed/34442598 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi12080976 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Sun, Zhuqi
Fang, Haoyu
Xu, Baochun
Yang, Lina
Niu, Haoran
Wang, Hongfei
Chen, Da
Liu, Yijian
Wang, Zhuopeng
Wang, Yanyan
Guo, Qiuquan
Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation
title Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation
title_full Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation
title_fullStr Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation
title_full_unstemmed Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation
title_short Flexible Wireless Passive LC Pressure Sensor with Design Methodology and Cost-Effective Preparation
title_sort flexible wireless passive lc pressure sensor with design methodology and cost-effective preparation
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8399622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34442598
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi12080976
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