Polymeric piezoresistive airflow sensor to monitor respiratory patterns

Sajad Abolpour Moshizi, Abolfazl Abedi, Majid Sanaeepur*, Christopher J. Pastras, Zhao Jun Han, Shuying Wu, Mohsen Asadnia*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Monitoring human respiratory patterns is of great importance as it gives essential information for various medical conditions, e.g. sleep apnoea syndrome and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, etc. Herein, we have developed a polymeric airflow sensor based on nanocomposites of vertically grown graphene nanosheets (VGNs) with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and explored their applications in monitoring human respiration. The sensing performance of the VGNs/PDMS nanocomposite was characterized by exposing to a range of airflow rates (20-130 l min-1), and a linear performance with high sensitivity and low response time (mostly below 1 s) was observed. To evaluate the experimental results, finite-element simulation models were developed in the COMSOL Multiphysics package. The piezoresistive properties of VGNs/PDMS thin film and fluid-solid interaction were thoroughly studied. Laser Doppler vibrometry measures of sensor tip displacement closely approximated simulated deflection results and validated the dynamic response of the sensor. By comparing the proposed sensor and some other airflow sensors in the literature, it is concluded that the VGNs/PDMS airflow sensor has excellent features in terms of sensor height, detection range and sensitivity. The potential application of the VGNs/PDMS airflow sensor in detecting the respiration pattern of human exercises like walking, jogging and running has been demonstrated.

Original languageEnglish
Article number20210753
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of the Royal Society Interface
Volume18
Issue number185
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2021

Keywords

  • respiratory sensors
  • piezoresistive sensors
  • finite-element simulation
  • graphene-based sensors
  • vertical graphene nanosheets

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