posted on 2021-03-29, 11:03authored byXuan Zhang, Jingwei Ai, Ruiping Zou, Bin Su
Healthcare
monitoring,
especially for respiration, has attracted
tremendous attention from academics considering the great significance
of health information feedback. The respiratory rate, as a critical
health indicator, has been used to screen and evaluate potential illness
risks in early medical diagnoses. A self-powered sensing system for
medical monitoring is critical and imperative due to needless battery
replacement and simple assembly. However, the development of a self-powered
respiratory sensor with highly sensitive performance is still a daunting
challenge. In this work, a compressible and stretchable magnetoelectric
sensor (CSMS) with an arch-shaped air gap is reported, enabling self-powered
respiratory monitoring driven by exhaled/inhaled breath. The CSMS
contains two key functional materials: liquid metals and magnetic
powders both with low Young’s modulus, allowing for sensing
compressibility and stretchability simultaneously. More importantly,
such a magnetoelectric sensor exhibits mechanoelectrical converting
capacity under an external force, which has been verified by Maxwell
numerical simulation. Owing to the air-layer introduction, the magnetoelectric
sensors achieve high sensitivity (up to 17.73 kPa–1), fast response, and long-term stability. The highly sensitive and
self-powered magnetoelectric sensor can be further applied as a noninvasive,
miniaturized, and portable respiratory monitoring system with the
aim of warning for potential health risks. We anticipate that this
technique will create an avenue for self-powered respiratory monitoring
fields.