可穿戴式柔性电子应变传感器

Wearable and flexible electronic strain sensor

传统的电子应变传感器大多基于金属和半导体材料,其便携性、柔韧性和可穿戴特性差.随着柔性电子材料和传感技术的快速发展,柔性应变传感器在电子皮肤和机器人等领域的应用引起人们越来越广泛的关注.由于生物相容性好,同时兼具可穿戴性、实时监测、非侵入式等一系列优点,高弹性和可拉伸性应变传感器的开发逐渐成为研究热点.本文综述了近年来可穿戴式柔性电子应变传感在材料发展、传感机理、集成输出及潜在应用等方面的研究进展,对可穿戴式柔性电子传感器所面临的挑战做了简单讨论,提出了一系列可能的优化及解决方案,并对其未来的发展方向进行了展望.

Flexible strain sensors or deformable strain sensors have attracted more and more attention for their excellent advantages and wide applications in personal electronics and industrial monitoring. The electronic skins and robotics are candidates for promoting the advancement of science and technology in recent years. Because of their biomedical applications, flexible strain sensors will significantly expand the application scope of stretchable electronics, particularly large-area electronics. The arbitrary surfaces covered with flexible electronics can be stretched in all directions, which are necessary for the next generation electronics. Howerer, conventional electronic strain sensors based on metal and semiconductor materials have poor portability, flexibility, and wearability, which is not applicable for stretchable sensors. With the rapid development of materials and electronic technology in the past decades, flexible strain sensors have become more and more popular in electronic skin, robotics, and other fields. Compared with conventional electronic sensors, flexible strain sensors have many unique advantages, such as good biocompatibility, wearable, real-time monitoring and non-invasive. In this review, the progress of wearable flexible strain sensors in materials, sensing mechanism, integrated output, and potential application are presented. After a brief introduction for the development and application of wearable flexible strain sensors, a simple comparison of old and new sensors is given. Then, studies on the different parts of the sensor and the materials are reviewed, including substrate, the dielectric layer, active layer and electrodes. Subsequently, the mechanism inclouding piezoresistivity, capacitivity, piezoelectricity, optical waveguide and other mechanisms of flexible strain sensors are presented. In addition, this review summarizes the integration and output of the flexible strain sensors. And the faced challenges of the flexible strain sensors and possible optimization solutions are proposed. Finally, challenges, important directions and perspectives related to flexible stretchable strain sensors are discussed. Continued rapid progress in this area is promising for the development of a fully integrated e-skin in the near future.