Fiber-junction design for directional bending sensors

Abstract

Abstract Flexible sensors in wearable electronics have become increasingly multifunctional due to the development of materials synthesis and structure design. In particular, structural design can not only add capabilities to sensors fabricated from existing available and normal materials, but also offer opportunities for the fabrication of sensors with certain desired functions. Here, we designed a series of fiber-junction structure models, in which two fibers were simply hooked to each other to form a junction on a flexible printed circuit, for fabrication of directional bending sensors. The value and direction of bending angle are related to the change in electronic signal by a theoretical expression, allowing us to employ a simple and practicable method to use available conductive fiber materials to fabricate high-sensitivity, high-resolution and directional bending sensors. In addition, these models are generally applicable, which have broad combination with different conductive fiber, and corresponding bending sensors all possess capability of directional identification. Furthermore, the capability of identifying directional bending was demonstrated by human motion monitoring such as joint bending and muscle contraction.