Advances in compliant magnetic field sensorics

The recent rapid advance and eagerness of portable consumer electronics stimulate the development of functional elements towards being lightweight, flexible, and wearable. Next generation flexible appliances aim to become fully autonomous and will require ultra-thin and flexible navigation modules, body tracking and relative position monitoring systems. Key building blocks of navigation and position tracking devices are magnetic field sensors.
Although there is a remarkable progress in the field of shapeable magnetoelectronics [1], until recently there was no technology available that can enable sensitivities to geomagnetic fields of 50 µT and, ultimately, magnetic fields of smaller than 1 µT in a mechanically compliant form factor. If available, these devices would contribute greatly to the realization of high-performance on-skin interactive electronics [2,3] and point of care applications [4,5].
Here, we will present technological platforms allowing to realize not only mechanically imperceptible electronic skins, which enable perception of the geomagnetic field (e-skin compasses) [6], but also enable sensitivities down to ultra-small fields of sub-50 nT [7]. We demonstrate that e-skin compasses allow humans to orient with respect to earth’s magnetic field ubiquitously. Furthermore, biomagnetic orientation enables novel interactive devices for virtual and augmented reality applications. We showcase this by realizing touchless control of virtual units in a game engine using omnidirectional magnetosensitive skins (fig. 1). This concept was further extended by demonstrating a compliant magnetic microelectromechanical platform (m-MEMS), which is able to transduce both tactile (via mechanical pressure) and touchless (via magnetic field) stimulations simultaneously and discriminate them in real time [8]. Those devices are crucial for interactive electronics, human-machine interfaces, but also for the realization of smart soft robotics with highly compliant integrated feedback system as well as in medicine for physicians and surgeons.

[1] D. Makarov et al., Applied Physics Reviews 3 (2016), 011101.
[2] G. S. Canon Bermudez et al., Science Advances 4 (2018), eaao2623.
[3] M. Melzer et al., Nature Communications 6 (2015), 6080.
[4] G. Lin et al., Lab Chip 14 (2014), 4050.
[5] G. Lin et al., Lab Chip 17 (2017), 1884.
[6] G. S. Canon Bermudez et al., Nature Electronics 1 (2018), 589.
[7] P. N. Granell et al., npj Flexible Electronics 3 (2019), 3.
[8] J. Ge et al., Nature Communications (2019). doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12303-5