Publication: Design and fabrication of flexible strain sensor for food packaging
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Date
2023-07-13
Authors
Joseph, Ting Mui Fu
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Abstract
In these few years, people are more concerned about the quality and safety of food products especially during transportation and storage method as consummation of food products are directly impact to people’s health. Therefore, this project is about designing and making a sensor that can assist consumers to detect any potential damages or mishandling of food packaging such as compression, bending, or stretching so that food products consumed are in optimal condition. The operating principle of the sensor used in this project is based on the mechanical deformation or strain experienced by food packaging.
The structure material of strain sensor that we are going to use is stretchable and flexible which can bend and stretch without tear easily and fit on different pattern of food packaging. The substrate and dielectric material that we are going is PDMS which fulfil highly flexible and sensitive piezoresistive properties. Silver electrode is being used as conductors in the sensor as it portraits high electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance and hardness properties which are being prioritized. The chosen materials exhibit excellent mechanical properties and are capable of accurately detecting and quantifying strain variations.
The fabrication of strain sensor starts with the fabrication of substrate mould which involve 3D printing follow by the fabrication of PDMS using soft lithography method. After that, the electrode is fabricated using drop casting method on the PDMS layer then lastly finishing with dielectric layer using the similar method of PDMS substrate fabrication. After the fabrication of the sensor, the performance of strain sensor is evaluated based on the conductivity and capacitance test. These two tests are done with different number layers of electrode and the data is tabulated and compared with the data obtained from research paper.
Conclusion, this project shows that the strain sensor can be used in food packaging and is useful as it helps consumer to get know the condition of food packaging and prevent the food products from getting damaged or going bad based on the info provided. The findings contribute to the advancement of food quality assurance systems and offer potential applications in various industries requiring real-time monitoring of strain and mechanical stresses.