Flexible and Degradable Multimodal Sensor Fabricated by Transferring Laser-Induced Porous Carbon on Starch Film

Abstract

Flexible sensors (FSs) hold great potential in wearable and intelligent equipment, but the preparation of degradable and multimodal FSs is urgently demanded, which may simplify the sensor matrix and reduce electronic waste. Here in this work, a multimodal and degradable FS was fabricated by transferring laser-induced porous carbon onto starch film. The obtained sensor showed three modes that can detect strain (with gauge factor (GF) = 134.2, response time of 130 ms, and stability >1000 times), temperature (25–90 °C), and pressure (0–250 kPa). The sensor can be used for monitoring human motions, detection of spatial pressure, and multiple stimuli. More importantly, the sensor was demonstrated to be degradable in water, suggesting it is a “green” electronic device being free of electronic pollution. This kind of multimodal and degradable FS may find wide applications in health and sports monitoring, flexible electronics, artificial intelligence, and so on.

Materials, Electrical Performance, Mechanisms, Applications, and Manufacturing Approaches for Flexible Strain Sensors

“…In addition to the above-mentioned three types of laser-based electronics, there are some laser-induced been carbonized and reduced materials have been applied to flexible strain sensors. For example, to prepare degradable multimodal sensor, transferring laser-induced porous carbon from PI to the starch film was conducted by Huang’s group [ 244 ]. The resulted strain sensor shows multi-sensing functions, including strain, temperature and pressure.…”

Flexible Hybrid Sensor Systems with Feedback Functions

“…[ 77 ] Another advantage of the LIG technique is that it can be almost transferred from the PI to soft materials, such as PDMS or Ecoflex that features greater flexibility and stretchability. [ 78–81 ] Until now, LIG has been applied in versatile flexible sensors to measure strain, [ 82,83 ] pressure, [ 84 ] humidity, [ 85 ] temperature, [ 86 ] sweat biomarkers, [ 87 ] and urine. [ 88 ] Representative research has focused on employing LIG for voice recognition, [ 89 ] human sweat analysis, [ 77,90 ] and gas sensing.…”

Fabrication of low cost and low impact RH and temperature sensors for the internet of environmental-friendly things

“…In addition, some of the presented processes are not suitable for a large-scale and cost-effective production of devices, as it is de case of the one presented in [49]. [51] also opted for the pattering of resistive layouts on biodegradable substrates; one of them following a UV lithography and etching process, after which the pattern is transferred to the substrate (which is a similar process to the one followed in the LIG-based sensor presented by Liu et al [53]); and the other following a mask-aided drop casting method. It can be seen that the sensitivities of the temperature sensors presented in this work are higher than that obtained with the Mg-based and Zn-based sensors, even with smaller areas (e.g., when compare the carbon-based sensor with respect to the Mg-based one).…”