Large-scale assembly of highly sensitive Si-based flexible strain sensors for human motion monitoring

Silicon is the dominant semiconductor in modern society, but the rigid nature of most Si structures hinders its applications in flexible electronics. In this work, Si-based flexible strain sensors are fabricated with Si fabric consisting of long Si nanowires. The as-obtained sensors demonstrate a large strain range of 50% and a gauge factor of up to 350, which are sufficient to detect human motions with superior performance over traditional sensors. The results reveal that the assembling strategy may potentially be applied to large-scale fabrication of highly sensitive, flexible strain sensors for emerging applications such as healthcare and sports monitoring. Moreover, the Si fabric would also enable broad applications of Si materials in other flexible and wearable devices such as flexible optoelectronics and displays.