Multifunctional Flexible Sensor with the Hybrid Staggered-Rib Conductive Network for Intelligent Recognition of Human Biomechanical and Electrophysiological Signals

Abstract

Flexible sensors as emerging wearable electronics are widely utilized in exercise guidance, medical services, intelligent robots, etc., providing rich data for the Internet of Things and promoting the intelligence and convenience of people’s lives. However, it is still difficult to design and fabricate multifunctional flexible sensors with excellent comprehensive performance and universality by balancing various sensing parameters in a scientific and economical way. Herein, a flexible sensor with a synergistic conductive network composed of linear and staggered-rib conductive pathways is prepared by screen printing, which realizes the improvement of comprehensive sensing performance and the expansion of functions. The prepared flexible sensor exhibits ultrahigh sensitivity, wide response range, excellent stability, and durability and has been successfully applied to detect human biomechanical signals induced by mouth opening, chewing, swallowing, breathing, clenching, and various joint movements. The motion pattern recognition for different movements of the knee joint is achieved by artificial intelligence with a high accuracy of 93.7%. Furthermore, the portable wireless physiological monitoring device assembled by the prepared sensor is developed to continuously monitor the electromyography (EMG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals for a long time, stably, reliably, and accurately in a noninvasive and wearable manner, which can provide high-value big data support for health warning, early disease screening, and diagnosis, showing great application potential and commercial value in the field of intelligent medicine and personalized health care. The innovative and scalable sensing performance optimization strategy proposed in this work promotes the popularization and application of high-performance and multifunctional wearable electronics.