[Seoul = Newsis] Journalist Heejun Kim = SNU College of Engineering revealed on the 14^th that Professor Seung Hwan Ko’s Team (Ph.D. student Seok Jun Hong, Masters Student Kwon Gyu Kim  developed a nano wire based flexible deformation sensor that can detect deformation states in multiple dimensions.<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Up until now, despite the growing interest in wearable flexible deformation sensors, the current technology were unable to determine the direction of deformation and lacked in sensitivity in detecting them as well, making it difficult to use a multi-axis deformation sensor.

Professor Ko’s team succeeded in detecting multidimensional deformation states by making it possible to detect deformation directions in silver nanowire networks.

By using ultrafine conductive silver nanowires thinner than 100nm to develop networks, the network deforms just like a stretched stocking without losing its conductivity.

At this point, by measuring the change in conductivity of the wires the deformation direction can be found out.

Previous Silver nano-networks changed in conductivity regardless of the direction of deformation making it impossible to detect the directional change.

Professor Ko’s team solved this problem by pre-deforming the board to develop a silver nanowire network that wrinkles to one side.

Conductivity does not change in the wire when the deformation is given in the direction of the wrinkles, hence allowing the detection of deformation directions.

The team combined these silver nanowire networks perpendicular to each other and made then simultaneously send their signals which allowed the detection of deformation on multiple directions at the same time.

Professor Ko said, ”Flexible multidimensional deformation sensors are not only directly attachable on the body but can also provide information on multi-dimensional deformation states. We expect this to have a large impact on the high performance smart wears and wearable electronics industry and the medical sector as well.”

This research was funded by the Mid-size Researcher Support set up by the MSIP (Ministry of Science ICT and Future Planning) and the NRF (National Research Foundation of Korea). It was published on , a nano-sector journal, on the 7^th of July