Printable giant magnetoresistive sensors with high sensitivity at small magnetic fields
Final Report Abstract
The progress of skin-conformal electronics triggers new modalities of designing imperceptible, comfortable, and human-interactive electronics for virtual- and augmented reality, humanoid robots, and personal healthcare applications. These emerging technologies for interactive electronics are accompanied with tracking the position and monitoring daily activities of the human body, which can be addressed by magnetic field sensors. In this respect, magnetic field sensors should allow for not only conformal integration on the skin but also high sensitivity in low magnetic field range, which is relevant for our daily life. Printing technique is a promising strategy to design such skin-conformal magnetic field sensors due to scalable, lowtemperature, cost-effective, tunable and shapeable processability. However, printed magnetic field sensors for skin-conformable electronics operating at low magnetic fields were not available. The ultimate goal of this project was to realize printed magnetic field sensors revealing giant magnetoresistive (GMR) effect, which are characterised by strong sensitivity to small magnetic fields in the range of 1 mT. To address this challenge, we developed a printable magnetic paste composed of magneto-sensitive GMR microflakes and viscous triblock copolymer. Upon thermal treatment, thermoplastic triblock copolymer experiences volumetric shrinkage, which leads to good percolation in the network of microflakes and thus boosts the magnetoresistive sensing performance. Therefore, the here developed GMR sensors exhibit 2 orders of magnitude improvement in sensitivity to small magnetic field (0.88 mT) with excellent mechanical conformability in comparison with state-of-the-art printable magnetic field sensors. We feature the potential of our skin-conformal and printable magnetoresistive sensors in augmented reality settings, where a sensor-functionalized finger conducts remote and touchless control of virtual objects manageable for scrolling electronic documents and zooming maps using small permanent magnets. Within the project accomplishment, we successfully achieved all goals of the project, which are published in major material science outlets. In addition to these main objectives, which were initially planned for the project in 2018, the actual implementation activities led to impactful discoveries including (i) the development of a technology to realize highly conformal magnetic composites for magnetic soft robots. (ii) We developed a method to realize magnetoresistive sensors relying on anisotropic magnetoresistive (AMR) effect in delaminated thin films prepared using magnetron sputtering. (iii) Our successful exploration on printed AMR sensors prepared based on thin film technology encouraged us to test the possibility to realize electrical percolation in printed composites with commercial permalloy microparticles (permalloy = Fe19Ni81 alloy). This work resulted in the world’s first self-healable magnetic field sensors. This is the enabler publication for the following activities on the eco-sustainable magnetoelectroncis. This topic has been not explored by the research community. (iv) With the information in hand that electrical percolation can be realised in composites with commercial microparticles, we extended our focus to realize high-performance magnetic field sensors relying on other magnetoresistive effects, which are fundamentally new. In particular, we chose commercial Bi microparticles to realize printed magnetic field sensors. Bismuth is higher order topological insulator, supporting the so-called linear magnetoresistive effect. These fundamental property allowed us to extend the operation range of printed magnetic field sensors to very high fields, e.g. sensors can operate even at 7 T. The results of this project are presented in numerous publications and discussed with the research community of material scientists, physicists and engineers in the frame of invited and contributed talks at major topical conferences. Furthermore, the results obtained in the frame of this DFG project provided a solid base in the understanding of the magnetic composites (electrically conducting and non-conducting), which enabled successful application for follow-up third party funding via EU HORIZON and national (BMBF and BMWK) projects.
Publications
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A bimodal soft electronic skin for tactile and touchless interaction in real time. Nature Communications, 10(1).
Ge, Jin; Wang, Xu; Drack, Michael; Volkov, Oleksii; Liang, Mo; Cañón, Bermúdez Gilbert Santiago; Illing, Rico; Wang, Changan; Zhou, Shengqiang; Fassbender, Jürgen; Kaltenbrunner, Martin & Makarov, Denys
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Untethered and ultrafast soft-bodied robots. Communications Materials, 1(1).
Wang, Xu; Mao, Guoyong; Ge, Jin; Drack, Michael; Cañón, Bermúdez Gilbert Santiago; Wirthl, Daniela; Illing, Rico; Kosub, Tobias; Bischoff, Lothar; Wang, Changan; Fassbender, Jürgen; Kaltenbrunner, Martin & Makarov, Denys
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Printable and Stretchable Giant Magnetoresistive Sensors for Highly Compliant and Skin‐Conformal Electronics. Advanced Materials, 33(12).
Ha, Minjeong; Cañón, Bermúdez Gilbert Santiago; Kosub, Tobias; Mönch, Ingolf; Zabila, Yevhen; Oliveros, Mata Eduardo Sergio; Illing, Rico; Wang, Yakun; Fassbender, Jürgen & Makarov, Denys
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Printable anisotropic magnetoresistance sensors for highly compliant electronics. Applied Physics A, 127(4).
Oliveros, Mata Eduardo Sergio; Cañón, Bermúdez Gilbert Santiago; Ha, Minjeong; Kosub, Tobias; Zabila, Yevhen; Fassbender, Jürgen & Makarov, Denys
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Reconfigurable Magnetic Origami Actuators with On‐Board Sensing for Guided Assembly. Advanced Materials, 33(25).
Ha, Minjeong; Cañón, Bermúdez Gilbert Santiago; Liu, Jessica A.‐C.; Oliveros, Mata Eduardo Sergio; Evans, Emily E.; Tracy, Joseph B. & Makarov, Denys
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Dispenser Printed Bismuth‐Based Magnetic Field Sensors with Non‐Saturating Large Magnetoresistance for Touchless Interactive Surfaces. Advanced Materials Technologies, 7(10).
Oliveros‐Mata, Eduardo Sergio; Voigt, Clemens; Cañón, Bermúdez Gilbert Santiago; Zabila, Yevhen; Valdez‐Garduño, Nestor Miguel; Fritsch, Marco; Mosch, Sindy; Kusnezoff, Mihails; Fassbender, Jürgen; Vinnichenko, Mykola & Makarov, Denys
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Self-healable printed magnetic field sensors using alternating magnetic fields. Nature Communications, 13(1).
Xu, Rui; Cañón, Bermúdez Gilbert Santiago; Pylypovskyi, Oleksandr V.; Volkov, Oleksii M.; Oliveros, Mata Eduardo Sergio; Zabila, Yevhen; Illing, Rico; Makushko, Pavlo; Milkin, Pavel; Ionov, Leonid; Fassbender, Jürgen & Makarov, Denys
