It’s not just professors who can
conduct cutting edge research with
newsworthy results. Graduate and
Ph.D students at N.C. State helped
develop various types of flexible
body-powered sensors that can detect
strength, pressure and monitor
health, as part of an ongoing
project.
Amanda Myers, a graduate student
in mechanical engineering, is
working on such sensors under the
direction of Yong Zhu, an assistant
professor in mechanical and
aerospace engineering and one of
the lead researchers of the project.
“I work on creating, developing
and testing sensors that we
use on the project,” Myers said.
“The health monitoring project
is part of the ASSIST Center and
is funded by the National Science
Foundation. We are working on
a common goal to create a bodypowered
sensor.”
According to Myers, the Advanced
Self-Powered Systems of
Integrated Sensors and Technologies
Center is an NSF-funded engineering
research center with funding
going to individual research
projects in different departments
and universities.
“The idea is that you have a system
you want to create, and there
are components to the system with
different research groups working
on different components of the
system,” Myers said.
The research done by various
ASSIST Center teams can be combined
to make different kinds of
sensors, according to Myers.
“The sensors have a wide
range of applications,” Myers
said. “They can be used for
antennas, in pressure sensing
and in strength sensing.
There are definitely a lot of
different applications. I focused
on the health monitoring
aspect in my preliminary
work, but we also have
others in our research group
that are working on other applications.”
While there are many other
kinds of sensors, Myers was
only able to comment on the
ones she worked on.
“The pressure sensors have
silver nanowires in a layer,”
Myers said. “When you have
two layers of the nanowires
that are separated by, say, a
substance or a separate material,
pressing down will cause
the distance between the two
nanowires to change, and you
can correlate that change in
distance with pressure.”
Shanshan Yao, a Ph.D
student in mechanical and
aerospace engineering, also
worked with Myers on the
body sensors research.
“We worked on the silver
nanowire for the wearable
sensor,” Yao said. “We used
silver nanowires to create
stretchable electrodes, and
then we used that to make
wearable sensors.”
Yao said the silver nanowires
are unique since they are
biocompatible and non-toxic,
and unlike more frequently
used unrefined carbon nanotubes,
they are safer for medical
applications and health
monitoring.
According to Yao, a more
commercial use for such
sensors could be for athletes
to monitor their vitals while
exercising. Additionally, they
can be used to detect bioelectric
signals and work as
conductors.
According to the ASSIST
Center website, other ASSIST
Center research involves
working on ways to
harness energy from the
human body and convert
it to usable forms or store
it in capacitors, developing
wearable interfaces and
other components related
to the body-powered wearable
sensor research.
According to Myers, the
sensors are very f lexible,
comparable to a rubber
band. Both Myers and Yao
said they are optimistic
about this eventually becoming
publicly available
in the near future.
“It definitely has the potential.
It just depends on
certain companies being
interested in taking the
research and developing it
for commercial use.” Myers
said.
