Authors: Tushar Sharma Kevin Aroom Sahil Naik Brijesh Gill John X J Zhang
Publish Date: 2012/12/01
Volume: 41, Issue: 4, Pages: 744-751
Abstract
We demonstrate the design of thin flexible pressure sensors based on piezoelectric PVDFTrFE polyvinyledenedifluoridetetrafluoroethylene copolymer film which can be integrated onto a catheter where the compact inner lumen space limit the dimensions of the pressure sensors Previously we demonstrated that the thinfilm sensors of one micrometer thickness were shown to have better performance compared to the thicker film with no additional electrical poling or mechanical stretching due to higher crystallinity The pressure sensors can be mass producible using standard lithography process with excellent control of film uniformity and thickness down to one micrometer The fabricated pressure sensors were easily mountable on external surface of commercial catheters Elaborate experiments were performed to demonstrate the applicability of PVDF sensors towards catheter based biomedical application The resonant frequency of the PVDF sensor was found to be 634 MHz The PVDF sensors can operate over a broad pressure range of 0–300 mmHg The average sensitivity of the PVDF sensor was found to be four times higher 99 μV/mmHg than commercial pressure sensor while the PVDF sensor 026 s had fivefold shorter response time than commercial pressure sensor 130 s making the PVDF sensors highly suitable for realtime pressure measurements using cathetersThis work was supported partially by National Science Foundation grant number 1128677 PI Zhang and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston We also appreciate Microelectronics Research Center MRC National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network NNIN staff for their continuing support and The Welch Foundation in support of the facilities utilized in this work We would like to thank the Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of Texas at Austin and Mr Bobby Knight for the help with 3D rapid prototyping We also thank Dr Christopher Ellison and Steven M Elliott for the help with differential scanning calorimetry
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