Laser-Induced Graphene Printed Wearable Flexible Antenna-Based Strain Sensor for Wireless Human Motion Monitoring

Abstract

Leveraging laser-induced graphene (LIG) in various flexible polymer electronics applications is becoming tremendously popular. LIG is porous multilayer graphene generated by a single-step process using infrared CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> laser onto the carbon-based polymers. In this article, a direct LIG printed microstrip patch antenna operating at the 5.8-GHz unlicensed band is presented. Based on simulations, the proposed design exhibited the desired unidirectional radiation characteristics with a measured gain of 1.82 dBi at the resonant frequency. The LIG-based rectangular patch was printed using the CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> laser by selective reduction of polyimide (PI) sheet. The chemical properties of LIG were examined using various structural and morphological characterization techniques, which confirmed the formation of multilayer graphene. The sensitivity of the patch antenna was analyzed for measuring strain and its effect on LIG. By harnessing LIG on flexible material such as PI sheet, the antenna exhibited a threshold increase in sensitivity. The proposed sensor shows a sensitivity of 14.08 and 11.34 for compressive and tensile strain, respectively. Inspired by the significant sensitivity, the fabricated device has been examined for human motion monitoring by attaching it to the human hand for practical usage in real-time applications. The proposed antenna-based sensor reduces the number of components by eliminating external wiring and onboard battery. Moreover, it serves as both the sensing and wireless data transmitting element. Overall, this work demonstrates designing a compact, easy-to-fabricate, sensitive, and flexible antenna-based Internet of Things (IoT) sensor for motion detection, structural health monitoring, and industrial strain sensing applications.