Song Xingda, Wang Qi, Liu Qiulan, Yu Longteng, Wang Shipeng, Yao Ni, Tong Limin, Zhang Lei
Research Center for Humanoid Sensing, Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou 311121, China.
State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Oct 11;15(40):47177-47183. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c07831. Epub 2023 Sep 27.
The detection of subtle temperature variation plays an important role in many applications, including proximity sensing in robotics, temperature measurements in microfluidics, and tumor monitoring in healthcare. Herein, a flexible miniaturized optical temperature sensor is fabricated by embedding twisted micro/nanofibers in a thin layer of polydimethylsiloxane. Enabled by the dramatic change of the coupling ratio under subtle temperature variation, the sensor exhibits an ultrahigh sensitivity (-30 nm/°C) and high resolution (0.0012 °C). As a proof-of-concept demonstration, a robotic arm equipped with our sensor can avoid undesired collisions by detecting the subtle temperature variation caused by the existence of a human. Moreover, benefiting from the miniaturized and engineerable sensing structure, real-time measurement of subtle temperature variation in microfluidic chips is realized. These initial results pave the way toward a category of optical sensing devices ranging from robotic skin to human-machine interfaces and implantable healthcare sensors.
微小温度变化的检测在许多应用中发挥着重要作用，包括机器人技术中的接近感应、微流体中的温度测量以及医疗保健中的肿瘤监测。在此，通过将扭曲的微/纳米纤维嵌入聚二甲基硅氧烷薄层中来制造一种柔性小型化光学温度传感器。由于在微小温度变化下耦合比的显著变化，该传感器表现出超高灵敏度（-30 nm/°C）和高分辨率（0.0012 °C）。作为概念验证演示，配备我们传感器的机器人手臂可以通过检测人体存在引起的微小温度变化来避免不必要的碰撞。此外，受益于小型化且可设计的传感结构，实现了对微流体芯片中微小温度变化的实时测量。这些初步结果为从机器人皮肤到人机接口以及可植入医疗保健传感器等一系列光学传感设备铺平了道路。
