A fiber-shaped light-emitting pressure sensor for visualized dynamic monitoring

Abstract

The development of fiber-shaped pressure sensors is on the rise due to their high flexibility, breathability and integrability for promising applications in human-activity monitoring and personal healthcare. Achieving simultaneous dynamic monitoring and real-time visualization in one fiber-shaped sensor is attractive but remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate a fiber-shaped light-emitting pressure sensor to simultaneously detect and visualize the force stimuli. This sensor is realized by the design of a coaxial structure composed of a micro-patterned polymer composite hollow fiber as the sheath and a fiber electrode as the core. The sheath embedded with electroluminescent phosphors serves as both pressure-sensing and light-emitting layers. The resulting fiber-shaped sensor not only presents a high capacitive sensitivity of 16.81 N⁻¹, but also allows people to visualize the real-time intensity and distribution of the force stimuli through electroluminescence. Impressively, our sensor still affords high flexibility and robustness even under recurring large deformations. As a demonstration, the fiber-shaped sensors have been woven into a smart textile and directly worn on human skin to monitor and display human activities like finger motion and facial expression. The textile-type visualizing–sensing platform proposed in this work may aid in pushing human-activity monitoring and personal healthcare a step forward.