Extending Porous Silicone Capacitive Pressure Sensor Applications into Athletic and Physiological Monitoring
Suzhou Industrial Park Campus, School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Francisco Molina-Lopez and Massimo Sacchetti
Sensors 2021, 21(4), 1119; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041119
Received: 8 December 2020
/
Revised: 21 January 2021
/
Accepted: 25 January 2021
/
Published: 5 February 2021
(This article belongs to the Section Wearables)
Porous polymer dielectric materials have been developed to increase the sensitivity of capacitive pressure sensors, so that they might expand capacitive sensor use, and promote the realization of the advantages of this class of sensor in further fields. However, their use has not been demonstrated in physiological monitoring applications such as respiration monitoring and body position detection during sleep; an area in need of unmet medical attention for conditions such as sleep apnea. Here, we develop and characterize a sensor comprised of a poly dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) sponge dielectric layer, and PDMS/carbon black (CB) blend electrode layers, with suitable compliance and sensitivity for integration in mattresses, pillows, and athletic shoe insoles. With relatively high pressure sensitivity (~0.1 kPa−1) and mechanical robustness, this sensor was able to fulfill a wide variety of roles, including athletic monitoring in an impact mechanics scenario, by recording heel pressure during running and walking, and physiological monitoring, by detecting head position and respiration of a subject lying on a pad and pillow. The sensor detected considerably greater relative signal changes than those reported in recent capacitive sensor studies for heel pressure, and for a comparably minimal, resistive sensor during respiration, in line with its enhanced sensitivity.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
capacitive pressure sensor; wearable sensor; porous dielectric; sleep monitoring; physiological monitoring; athletic monitoring
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Xia, Y.; Gu, H.; Xu, L.; Chen, X.D.; Kirk, T.V. Extending Porous Silicone Capacitive Pressure Sensor Applications into Athletic and Physiological Monitoring. Sensors 2021, 21, 1119. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041119
AMA Style
Xia Y, Gu H, Xu L, Chen XD, Kirk TV. Extending Porous Silicone Capacitive Pressure Sensor Applications into Athletic and Physiological Monitoring. Sensors. 2021; 21(4):1119. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041119
Chicago/Turabian StyleXia, Yun, Hao Gu, Lei Xu, Xiao D. Chen, and Tim V. Kirk. 2021. "Extending Porous Silicone Capacitive Pressure Sensor Applications into Athletic and Physiological Monitoring" Sensors 21, no. 4: 1119. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041119
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
