Engineering biomimetic hair bundle sensors for underwater sensing applications

• Main Authors: Kottapalli, Ajay Giri Prakash, Asadnia, Mohsen, Karavitaki, K. Domenica, Warkiani, Majid Ebrahimi, Miao, Jianmin, Corey, David P., Triantafyllou, Michael
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering; Fluid Drag; Auditory System
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/88709; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/45893
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We present the fabrication of an artificial MEMS hair bundle sensor designed to approximate the structural and functional principles of the flow-sensing bundles found in fish neuromast hair cells. The sensor consists of micro-pillars of graded height connected with piezoelectric nanofiber “tip-links” and encapsulated by a hydrogel cupula-like structure. Fluid drag force actuates the hydrogel cupula and deflects the micro-pillar bundle, stretching the nanofibers and generating electric charges. These biomimetic sensors achieve an ultrahigh sensitivity of 0.286 mV/(mm/s) and an extremely low threshold detection limit of 8.24 µm/s. A complete version of this paper has been published [1].