NUS team develops highly sensitive wireless strain sensors

The team is led by assistant professor Chen Po-Yen, from the NUS Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who believes that their sensor design principles will ‘significantly enhance’ the performance of soft robots and electronic skins.

Fabricated using flexible, stretchable and electrically conducive nanomaterials called MXenes, the novel sensors are said to be ultra-thin, battery-free and able to transmit data wirelessly. The team’s work was published in the journal ACS Nano in September 2020.

“Performance of conventional strain sensors has always been limited by the nature of sensing materials used, and users have limited options of customising the sensors for specific applications,” explained Po-Yen. “In this work, we have developed a facile strategy to control the surface textures of MXenes, and this enabled us to control the sensing performance of strain sensors for various soft exoskeletons.”

Tech company Realtek Singapore collaborated with the NUS team to develop the sensors. Chairman Dr Yeh Po-Leh said that the company are ‘looking forward to bringing the technologies from the lab to the market’, where researchers hope they could be used in applications such as precision manufacturing, where robotic arms are used to carry out intricate tasks like fabricating microchips.