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

• Main Authors: Zhuqi Sun, Haoyu Fang, Baochun Xu, Lina Yang, Haoran Niu, Hongfei Wang, Da Chen, Yijian Liu, Zhuopeng Wang, Yanyan Wang, Qiuquan Guo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
• Series: Micromachines
• Subjects: flexible LC pressure sensor; Ecoflex microcolumn; coplanar waveguide-fed monopole antenna; physical motion signal measurement
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/12/8/976

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.