Metamaterial-based wireless RF-MEMS strain sensors

Approximately 10% of the fractures do not heal properly because of the inability to monitor fracture healing. Standard radiography is not capable of discriminating whether bone healing is occurring normally or aberrantly. We propose and develop an implantable wireless sensor that monitors strain on implanted hardware in real time telemetrically. This enables clinicians to monitor fracture healing. Here we present the development and demonstration of metamaterial-based radiofrequency (RF) micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) strain sensors for wireless strain sensing to monitor fracture healing. The operating frequency of these sensors shifts under mechanical loading; this shift is related to the surface strain of the implantable test material. In this work, we implemented metamaterials in two different architectures as bio-implantable wireless strain sensors for the first time. These custom-design metamaterials exhibit better performance as sensors than traditional RF structures (e.g., spiral coils) because of their unique structural properties (splits). They feature a low enough operating frequency to avoid the background absorption of soft tissue and yield higher Q-factors compared to the spiral structures (because their gaps have much higher electric field density). In our first metamaterial architecture of an 5x5 array, the wireless sensor shows high sensitivity (109kHz/kgf, 5.148kHz/microstrain) with low nonlinearity-error (