Heterogeneous Integration of 2D Sensors for Wearable and Healthcare Applications

The next wave of innovation and business opportunities related to electronics will probably be about enabling “edge intelligence”. These are new microsystems with unprecedented levels of autonomy in terms of energy harvesting, sensing and information processing. Heterogeneous integration of new materials will be necessary to provide these microsystems with functionality not possible today in Si chips alone. This talk will discuss a few examples of how edge intelligence enabled by the use of two-dimensional (2D) materials will impact wearable devices for healthcare applications. The first example uses metallic fibers coated with a graphitic material to embed hundreds of pressure sensors on fabrics and garments. These sensors are then coupled to an RF harvesting chip based on a MoS2 rectifier to enable autonomous sensing of people’s movements. A second example uses arrays of hundreds of graphene-based chemical sensors inside a breathalyzer chamber to analyze the volatile organic compounds in patients’ breath. Finally, the low temperature synthesis of MoS2 allows for the integration of high performance devices based on this material on flexible polymer substrates for the development of flexible and active electrodes for electrophysiology.<br/><b>Acknowledgement.- </b>This work has been partially supported by the MIT/Army Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, the NSF Center for Integrated Quantum Materials, Ericsson, and the Army Research Office.