NaCl Ionization-Based Moisture Sensor Prepared by Aerosol Deposition for Monitoring Respiratory Patterns.

A highly polarizable moisture sensor with multimodal sensing capabilities has great advantages for healthcare applications such as human respiration monitoring. We introduce an ionically polarizable moisture sensor based on NaCl/BaTiO3 composite films fabricated using a facile aerosol deposition (AD) process. The proposed sensing model operates based on an enormous NaCl ionization effect in addition to natural moisture polarization, whereas all previous sensors are based only on the latter. We obtained an optimal sensing performance in a 0.5 µm-thick layer containing NaCl-37.5 wt% by manipulating the sensing layer thickness and weight fraction of NaCl. The NaCl/BaTiO3 sensing layer exhibits outstanding sensitivity over a wide humidity range and a fast response/recovery time of 2/2 s; these results were obtained by performing the one-step AD process at room temperature without using any auxiliary methods. Further, we present a human respiration monitoring system using a sensing device that provides favorable and stable electrical signals under diverse respiratory scenarios.