Ultraflexible glassy semiconductor fibers for thermal sensing and positioning

• Main Authors: Zhang, Ting, Wang, Zhe, Srinivasan, Bhuvanesh, Wang, Zhixun, Zhang, Jing, Li, Kaiwei, Boussard-Pledel, Catherine, Troles, Johann, Bureau, Bruno, Wei, Lei
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering; Thermoelectric Fibers; Fiber Fabrication
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147160
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Flexible, large-area, and low-cost thermal sensing networks with high spatial and temporal resolution are of profound importance in addressing the increasing needs for industrial processing, medical diagnosis, and military defense. Here, a thermoelectric (TE) fiber is fabricated by thermally codrawing a macroscopic preform containing a semiconducting glass core and a polymer cladding to deliver thermal sensor functionalities at fiber-optic length scales, flexibility, and uniformity. The resulting TE fiber sensor operates in a wide temperature range with high thermal detection sensitivity and accuracy, while offering ultraflexibility with the bending curvature radius below 2.5 mm. Additionally, a single TE fiber can either sense the spot temperature variation or locate the heat/cold spot on the fiber. As a proof of concept, a two-dimensional 3 × 3 fiber array is woven into a textile to simultaneously detect the temperature distribution and the position of heat/cold source with the spatial resolution of millimeter. Achieving this may lead to the realization of large-area, flexible, and wearable temperature sensing fabrics for wearable electronics and advanced artificial intelligence applications.