A High-Performance Strain Sensor for the Detection of Human Motion and Subtle Strain Based on Liquid Metal Microwire

Abstract

Flexible strain sensors have a wide range of applications, such as human motion monitoring, wearable electronic devices, and human–computer interactions, due to their good conformability and sensitive deformation detection. To overcome the internal stress problem of solid sensing materials during deformation and prepare small-sized flexible strain sensors, it is necessary to choose a more suitable sensing material and preparation technology. We report a simple and high-performance flexible strain sensor based on liquid metal nanoparticles (LMNPs) on a polyimide substrate. The LMNPs were assembled using the femtosecond laser direct writing technology to form liquid metal microwires. A wearable strain sensor from the liquid metal microwire was fabricated with an excellent gauge factor of up to 76.18, a good linearity in a wide sensing range, and a fast response/recovery time of 159 ms/120 ms. Due to these extraordinary strain sensing performances, the strain sensor can monitor facial expressions in real time and detect vocal cord vibrations for speech recognition.

Keywords

• liquid metal nanoparticles
• strain sensor
• microwire
• laser direct writing