Flexible metamaterials for wireless strain sensing

We proposed and demonstrated flexible metamaterial-based wireless strain sensors that include arrays of split ring resonators (SRRs) to telemetrically measure strain. For these metamaterial sensors, we showed that a flexible substrate (e.g., Kapton tape) delivers greater sensitivity and a more linear response as compared to using silicon substrates. Specifically, these tape-based flexible SRR sensors exhibit a significantly improved sensitivity level of 0.292 MHz/kgf with a substantially reduced nonlinearity error of 3% for externally applied mechanical loads up to 250 kgf. These data represent a sixfold increase in sensitivity and a 16-fold reduction in error percentage.