title: Ultrasensitive, passive and wearable sensors for monitoring human muscle motion and physiological signals.
abstract: Flexible sensors have attracted more and more attention as a fundamental part of anthropomorphic robot research, medical diagnosis and physical health monitoring. Here, we constructed an ultrasensitive and passive flexible sensor with the advantages of low cost, lightness and wearability, electric safety and reliability. The fundamental mechanism of the sensor is based on triboelectric effect inducing electrostatic charges on the surfaces between two different materials. Just like a plate capacitor, current will be generated while the distance or size of the parallel capacitors changes caused by the small mechanical disturbance upon it and therefore the output current/voltage will be produced. Typically, the passive sensor unambiguously monitors muscle motions including hand motion from stretch-clench-stretch, mouth motion from open-bite-open, blink and respiration. Moreover, this sensor records the details of the consecutive phases in a cardiac cycle of the apex cardiogram, and identify the peaks including percussion wave, tidal wave and diastolic wave of the radial pulse wave. To record subtle human physiological signals including radial pulsilogram and apex cardiogram with excellent signal/noise ratio, stability and reproducibility, the sensor shows great potential in the applications of medical diagnosis and daily health monitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China.
authors.forename: Changrui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China.
authors.forename: Shichang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China.
authors.forename: Lacheng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China.
authors.forename: Xiaoqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China.
authors.forename: Xuming
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China; Nanoscale Science and Technology Laboratory, Institute for Advanced Study, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, PR China. Electronic address: liwang@ncu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D056044:Actigraphy / Q000295:instrumentation*; D001450:Ballistocardiography; D003020:Clothing; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006801:Humans; D055617:Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems / Q000295:instrumentation*; D018670:Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014159:Transducers
keywords: Apex cardiogram; Flexible sensors; Radial pulsilogram; Triboelectric effect; Ultrasensitive