Monitoring Vital Signs of Respiration and Heart Beat Simultaneously via a Single Flexible Piezoelectret Sensor

This work reports a self-powered, flexible piezoelectret sensor with honeycomb structures for monitoring vital signs. Compared with the state-of-art technologies, three distinctive advancements have been achieved: (1) a self-powered and flexible pressure sensor using laser-patterned honeycomb piezoelectret structures for high sensitivity; (2) the capability to record both respiration and heart beat at the same chest location simultaneously via a single device; (3) successful extraction and separation of respiration and heart beat signals for practical applications. As such, this piezoelectret sensor could enable various health diagnostics such as asthma and cardiopulmonary arrest as well as observing the physical activity intensity levels for the training of athletes.