Highly sensitive and broadband meta-mechanoreceptor via mechanical frequency-division multiplexing.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37673899.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-41222-9 and PMC identifier 10482866.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Bio-mechanoreceptors capable of micro-motion sensing have inspired mechanics-guided designs of micro-motion sensors in various fields. However, it remains a major challenge for mechanics-guided designs to simultaneously achieve high sensitivity and broadband sensing due to the nature of resonance effect. By mimicking rat vibrissae, here we report a metamaterial mechanoreceptor (MMR) comprised of piezoelectric resonators with distributed zero effective masses featuring a broad range of local resonances, leading to near-infinite sensitivity for micro-motion sensing within a broad bandwidth. We developed a mechanical frequency-division multiplexing mechanism for MMR, in which the measured micro-motion signal is mechanically modulated in non-overlapping frequency bands and reconstructed by a computational multi-channel demodulation approach. The maximum sensitivity of MMR is improved by two orders of magnitude compared to conventional mechanics-guided mechanoreceptors, and its bandwidth with high sensitivity is extendable towards both low-frequency and high-frequency ranges in 0-12 kHz through tuning the local resonance of each individual sensing cell. The MMR is a promising candidate for highly sensitive and broadband micro-motion sensing that was previously inaccessible for mechanics-guided mechanoreceptors, opening pathways towards spatio-temporal sensing, remote-vibration monitoring and smart-driving assistance.