Nano-material based flexible radio frequency sensors for wearable health and environment monitoring: designs and prototypes utilizing 3d/inkjet printing technologies

Abstract

The research work is mainly focused on passive radio frequency (RF) sensing, in particular on the design and development of nano-material based flexible sensors for high frequency applications utilizing 3D/Inkjet printing technologies. One major advantage of nanomaterial based RF sensing platforms is the realization of completely passive remote sensors with high sensitivity in miniaturized packaging. The utilized 3D and inkjet printing technologies inherently make feasible the large-scale fabrication of flexible sensors at a very low cost. To demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach, address effectively the major challenges, and stress the achieved advances in the field of wireless sensing, my research introduces the design and development of an inkjet-printed passive RF gas sensor and two RF strain sensors, with a 2D bow-tie antenna and a 3D dipole antenna, respectively. The 3D dipole antenna based RF strain sensor is fully 3D printed. This work also includes the thorough discussion of the first generation of 3D printed stretchable RF sensors highlighting a hand gesture R&D design for wearable remote and passive sensing platform that takes full advantage of novel flexible/stretchable conductors developed as part of the reported research.