This paper reports on the study of microporous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) foams as a highly deformable dielectric material used in the composition of flexible capacitive pressure sensors dedicated to wearable use. A fabrication process allowing the porosity of the foams to be adjusted was proposed and the fabricated foams were characterized. Then, elementary capacitive pressure sensors (15 × 15 mm² square shaped electrodes) were elaborated with fabricated foams (5 mm or 10 mm thick) and were electromechanically characterized. Since the sensor responses under load are strongly non-linear, a behavioral non-linear model (first order exponential) was proposed, adjusted to the experimental data, and used to objectively estimate the sensor performances in terms of sensitivity and measurement range. The main conclusions of this study are that the porosity of the PDMS foams can be adjusted through the sugar:PDMS volume ratio and the size of sugar crystals used to fabricate the foams. Additionally, the porosity of the foams significantly modified the sensor performances. Indeed, compared to bulk PDMS sensors of the same size, the sensitivity of porous PDMS sensors could be multiplied by a factor up to 100 (the sensitivity is 0.14 %.kPa⁻¹ for a bulk PDMS sensor and up to 13.7 %.kPa⁻¹ for a porous PDMS sensor of the same dimensions), while the measurement range was reduced from a factor of 2 to 3 (from 594 kPa for a bulk PDMS sensor down to between 255 and 177 kPa for a PDMS foam sensor of the same dimensions, according to the porosity). This study opens the way to the design and fabrication of wearable flexible pressure sensors with adjustable performances through the control of the porosity of the fabricated PDMS foams.

In this work the authors present an experimental and theoretical study about the Q-branch lines’ broadening coefficients of N2 perturbed by H2. Experimental values for these parameters have been obtained at 440 and 580K, and quantum calculations have been performed using a new ab initio potential energy surface, obtained by quantum chemistry methods. The results of these calculations are compared to experimental data obtained previously at 77 and 298K [L. Gomez et al., Mol. Phys. 104, 1869 (2006)] and to the present measurements. A satisfactory agreement is obtained for the whole range of temperatures used in the experiments.

The evaluation of dielectric properties in the radio frequency (RF) bandwidth is highly relevant to characterize the physical or physiological state of organic materials. This paper reports on the implementation of an easy-to-use and contactless RF dielectric sensing technique used for the monitoring of the heat-induced gelation of a white egg sample. The sensing technique basically consists in the distant monitoring of a high-quality factor inductive RF resonator operating at 98 MHz, which is electromagnetically coupled to the egg white sample. A lumped element modeling of the contactless RF probe interacting with the egg white is proposed. It is used to estimate both the conductivity and the permittivity of the sample during its gelation, starting from the impedance changes measured at the ends of the RF probe, and after probe calibration carried out using a reference NaCl solution. The results obtained during a 10 h monitoring experience allow the dynamics of the egg white gelation to be analyzed. These results open the way to the development of easy-to-implement and non-invasive dielectric monitoring of organic materials, with many prospects in agrifood as well as health monitoring applications.

A high sensitivity radiofrequency (RF) probe dedicated to contactless dielectric characterisations is presented. A method for the impedance measurement of a distant RF resonator is first proposed. The method is evaluated as a function of the measurement distance starting from experiments. The obtained results enable assessment of the accuracy of the method and optimisation of its implementation.

A flat circular transmission line-based 300 MHz resonator was implemented for the non-contact assessment of burn depths in biological tissues. Used as a transmit-and-receive sensor, it was placed at a 2 mm distance from organic material test samples (pork fillet samples) which were previously burned on their surface in various heating conditions involving different temperatures, durations, and procedures. Data extracted from the sensor by means of a distant monitoring coil were found to clearly correlate with the depth of burn observed in the tissue samples (up to 40% sensor output changes for a 7 mm burn depth) and with the heating conditions (around 5% sensor output changes observed in samples burned with identical heating procedures but at two different temperatures—75 °C and 150 °C—and around 40% sensor output changes observed between samples heated at the same temperature but with different heating procedures). These results open the way for the development of easy-to-implement assessment and monitoring techniques for burns, e.g., integrated in wearable medical dressing-like monitoring devices.