Nanomesh pressure sensor for monitoring finger manipulation without sensory interference

Abstract

Monitoring of finger manipulation without disturbing the inherent functionalities is critical to understand the sense of natural touch. However, worn or attached sensors affect the natural feeling of the skin. We developed nanomesh pressure sensors that can monitor finger pressure without detectable effects on human sensation. The effect of the sensor on human sensation was quantitatively investigated, and the sensor-applied finger exhibits comparable grip forces with those of the bare finger, even though the attachment of a 2-micrometer-thick polymeric film results in a 14% increase in the grip force after adjusting for friction. Simultaneously, the sensor exhibits an extreme mechanical durability against cyclic shearing and friction greater than hundreds of kilopascals.

Recent Progress on Flexible Capacitive Pressure Sensors: From Design and Materials to Applications

“…[ 30 ] In spite of this advantageous property—the air is easily available in environment, nevertheless, the flexible pressure sensors always should show excellent mechanical durability which increases the repeatability, and therefore, the sensor could sustain large amounts of pressure without degradation in its performance after multiple testing. The sensors with air dielectric gap always require mechanical support whenever the large area of diaphragm is chosen for designing large area sensor modules [ 131 ] otherwise the mechanically sensitive diaphragm is deflected at the center due to the prestress and gravity effect. [ 81,132 ] The major issue with air dielectric is that whenever the air particles squeeze after pressure application, damping is caused which degrades the performance of the sensors.…”

“…To overcome the challenges of the air dielectric based flexible capacitive pressure sensor, graphene, and graphene oxides and some porous materials including different porous elastomers, [ 28,90,93 ] sponge, [ 43,87 ] microfiber wipe, [ 43 ] nano‐mesh, [ 131 ] have been utilized as dielectrics. These porous materials include some amount of air either in bubble form or air molecules which are present between the threads or wires.…”

Imperceptible Supercapacitors with High Area‐Specific Capacitance

“…Not included in this list, however, are imperceptible energy storage devices. Unlike other recently reported imperceptible electronics [ 4,5,7,13 ] where performance is minimally affected, reducing the thickness of energy storage devices to this level limits the mass loading of electrode materials, which is a big obstacle to achieve high area‐specific energy density. To our knowledge, among the thin electrodes [ 15–18 ] less than 1 μm, the recorded area‐specific energy density is only 2 mF cm −2 , [ 18 ] far below the requirement of practical application.…”

Differential cardiopulmonary monitoring system for artifact-canceled physiological tracking of athletes, workers, and COVID-19 patients

“…The emergence of wearable technologies capable of multimodal, clinical-grade monitoring of physiological health increases the demand for sensors, systems, and data analytics approaches that enable reliable, continuous operation during natural daily activities. By comparison to traditional devices that loosely couple to the wrist, skin-mounted technologies offer vastly superior measurement capabilities due to their persistent, intimate interfaces to the body (1)(2)(3)(4)(5). This mode of operation can support a range of clinically standard diagnostic assessments, such as those based on electrocardiography (2,(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11), photoplethysmography (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15), arterial tonometry (16)(17)(18)(19)(20), and others (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34).…”

“…4 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. 5 Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. 6 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.…”