Flexible and Wearable Flow Sensor Using Spinnable Carbon Nanotube Nanofilm for Respiration Monitoring

We report for the first time a lightweight, flexible and wearable hot-film flow sensor for real-time monitoring of human respiration. The sensor was manufactured by spinning and electrospinning methods from spinnable carbon nanotube (CNT) forest grown on silicon wafers and polyacrylonitrile (PAN). The sensor exhibited high sensitivity of 340 mV/(m/s), excellent flexibility, wearability and stability under bending and other mechanical disturbances. We successfully demonstrated a CNT wearable patch affixed to human upper lip for real-time monitoring of human respiration. The results indicate that our sensor can be employed to monitor sleep quality, personal health care and other clinical evaluations.