Flexible printed sensors for ubiquitous human monitoring

The flexible printed sensors based on nanomaterials available currently have numerous challenges attached to it. The formation of nanocomposite for the electrodes is an issue mainly regarding the solubility of the conducting material. Mostly, the electrodes are not highly conductive in the flexible sensors fabricated due to the non-uniform distribution of conductive material in the polymer. The process of introducing conductive material as electrodes needs manual processing and thus becomes expensive. The sensitivity of the flexible sensor saturates with time due to the constant bending leading to deformation marks on the substrate material. This also leads to uneven surface and eventually inappropriate reading of the sensor. It is difficult to decrease the inter-electrode distance due to the spreading of the conductive ink in the printed sensors. There are many drawbacks to the current method of fabrication of flexible printed sensor. This research follows a novel approach to developing a sensor via the fabrication and characterization of a flexible, strain sensitive patch which would be used for bio-medical applications. Based on the laser-ablation technology, some prototype sensors have been designed and fabricated. It shows the experimental results obtained from the developed sensor on the detection of limb movements. The sensors would also be explored for other novel applications in future.