Stencil masking makes laser-induced graphene sensors affordable

Credit: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have announced a new technology that could make manufacturing wearable health sensors more accessible and affordable.
Wearable sensors are important for continuously monitoring vital signs and other health indicators, providing real-time health insights that enable proactive and personalized healthcare. However, manufacturing these devices often requires specialized equipment and technical expertise, limiting their accessibility and widespread adoption.
A team led by Assistant Professor Tyler Ray in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (School of Engineering) and Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology (John A. Burns School of Medicine) introduced a low-cost, stencil-based method for fabricating sensors. It is made from laser-induced graphene (LIG), a key material used in wearable sensing platforms.
“This advancement allows us to create high-performance wearable sensors with higher accuracy and lower cost,” Ray said. “By using a simple metal stencil during the laser patterning process, we overcome important limitations of traditional manufacturing processes and open up new possibilities for sensor design and functionality.”
By employing commercially available metal stencils, the UH Manoa team was able to reduce the minimum feature size from about 120 micrometers to just 45 micrometers. This enables the creation of more complex sensor designs, such as fine-wire microarray electrodes, that were previously difficult to achieve with standard laser processing.
“We demonstrated the practicality of this method by fabricating a temperature sensor and a multielectrode electrochemical sensor,” Ray explained. “These devices showed improved performance, which we believe is due to the improved resolution and quality of the graphene patterns.”
The study was published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics as part of the magazine’s “Young Scientists in the Americas” highlights series.
The study’s lead author was Kaylee M. Clark, with co-authors Deylen T. Momoba and Kian La’i Viernes from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Jie Zhou from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
This innovation builds on Ray’s previous research “Swetner.” It is a 3D-printed wearable sweat sensor that collects and analyzes sweat to provide insights into various health conditions such as dehydration, fatigue, and serious illnesses such as diabetes.
The s-LIG method further increases the potential for accessible health monitoring technology by enabling scalable manufacturing of high-performance sensors without relying on traditional resource-intensive manufacturing routes.
Further information: Kaylee M. Clark et al., Fabrication of high-resolution, flexible, laser-induced graphene sensors by stencil masking, Biosensors and Bioelectronics (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2024.116649
Provided by University of Hawaii at Manoa
Citation: Stencil Masking Makes Laser-Induced Graphene Sensors Affordable (September 27, 2024) from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-laser-graphene-sensors-stencil-masking.html 2024 Retrieved September 28th
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