3D printed wearable flexible SIW and microfluidics sensors for Internet of Things and smart health applications

In this paper, a flexible SIW wearable sensing platform is proposed with a novel 3D printing process which enables fast-prototyping customized wearable devices. The fabrication utilizes state-of-the-art SLA 3D printing that features fast prototyping of easy-to-reconfigure flexible 3D objects. Two different flexible metallization approaches are explored in this paper, which are complementary to each other and provide an excellent 3D metallization solution together. Two 3D shape SIW transmission lines are shown with a great flexibility and great potential for wearable devices. Moreover, based on a SIW slot waveguide antenna, this paper presents a proof-of-concept microfluidics sensor with sensitivity of 1.7 MHz/Er, which can be used as a wearable sensing device for real-time monitoring of body fluids. The proposed SIW-based flexible wearable devices along with the microfluidics sensors can be used in various Internet-of-Things applications, such as smart health and food quality monitoring.