Magnetized Micropillar-Enabled Wearable Sensors for Touchless and Intelligent Information Communication

Highlights A wearable capacitive sensor, which can recognize both the magnitude and orientation of magnetic field with non-overlapping capacitance signals, was proposed as touchless and intelligent communication channel. The integrated sensor exhibited the high sensitivity of over 1.3 T -1 and detection limit down to 1 mT with excellent durability (over 10,000 cycles). The sensor revealed as an efficient and ternary interface with high-capacity for information interaction, e.g., Morse code, Braille communication, and multi-control instruction. The wearable sensors have recently attracted considerable attentions as communication interfaces through the information perception, decoding, and conveying process. However, it is still challenging to obtain a sensor that can convert detectable signals into multiple outputs for convenient, efficient, cryptic, and high-capacity information transmission. Herein, we present a capacitive sensor of magnetic field based on a tilted flexible micromagnet array (t-FMA) as the proposed interaction interface. With the bidirectional bending capability of t-FMA actuated by magnetic torque, the sensor can recognize both the magnitude and orientation of magnetic field in real time with non-overlapping capacitance signals. The optimized sensor exhibits the high sensitivity of over 1.3 T −1 and detection limit down to 1 mT with excellent durability. As a proof of concept, the sensor has been successfully demonstrated for convenient, efficient, and programmable interaction systems, e.g., touchless Morse code and Braille communication. The distinguishable recognition of the magnetic field orientation and magnitude further enables the sensor unit as a high-capacity transmitter for cryptic information interaction (e.g., encoded ID recognition) and multi-control instruction outputting. We believe that the proposed magnetic field sensor can open up a potential avenue for future applications including information communication, virtual reality device, and interactive robotics.