2014 IEEE Region 10 Symposium
The Effect of Processing Parameters on the
Performance of Cotton-Fabric-based MEMS
Fabricated Using Stamped Silver Nanoparticles
Nafis Zulkepli, Nik Nur Zuliyana Mohd Rajdi, Dedy H.B. Wicaksono*
Dept. of Clinical Science, Faculty of Biosciences & Medical Engineering (FBME),
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
Skudai, 81310, Johor, Malaysia
*email: dedy.wicaksono@biomedical.utm.my
AbstractIn this study, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were being
transferred onto fabric by stamping to produce different
conductive regions. The resistive part acts as the transducer of
the device using piezoresistive effects. The scope of this project is
to investigate the effect of stamping processing parameters to the
fabricated textile-based Micro Electro Mechanical System
(MEMS). We show that the force applied during stamping
procedure and the amount of AgNPs will affect the performance
of the sensor. We calculated the gauge factor in order to
investigate the sensitivity of the sensor with different processing
parameters. We found that there are optimum values for both
the applied force, i.e. about 15N, and the applied AgNPs amount,
i.e. 0.5 l, such that the sensitivity of the textile-based MEMS
strain sensing is maximum.
Keywords- textile; MEMS; AgNPs; processing parameter;
gauge factor
I. INTRODUCTION
Micro Electro Mechanical System or MEMS technology
has been widely used in many applications including in the
industry and biomedical worlds. Conventionally, MEMS
device are manufactured using similar techniques as those used
to create the integrated circuit [1]. Silicon is usually used as the
main materials to construct the MEMS device. Even though the
performance of silicon-based MEMS is good, but the
manufacturing process is expensive and time consuming [2].
Furthermore, the manufacturing process of silicon-based
MEMS requires specific expertise, clean room and other
special equipments. Silicon is also a brittle material in room
temperature that it is not suitable to be applied for biomedical
applications which require flexible platforms.
In order to overcome this problem, some advanced
materials have been developed to fabricate MEMS devices. In
2011, Liu et al. had developed a MEMS force sensor using
paper as the structural material [3]. They successfully explored
the feasibility of fabricating MEMS force sensor using paper.
However, the use of paper as the substrate materials for
MEMS devices is not suitable for certain applications
especially for wearable biomedical instrumentation. In order to
overcome this problem, textile was proposed here to produce a
The research is sponsored by Ministry of Education Malaysia, MoE under
Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) VOT No. 4F099 and 4F328,
and also by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) under Tier-1 Research
University Grant, VOT. 03H30.
978-1-4799-2027-3/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE
more flexible and reliable sensor device. Recently, textile or
cotton fabrics were developed as the new platform to create
MEMS device [4-5]. The working principle of paper and
textile-based MEMS is based on piezoresistive effect generated
by the deposited conductive materials [1]. Textiles is chosen in
this paper because of its properties such as low-cost,
lightweight, flexible enough for attachment to the body, surface
conformability, sustainability and environmentally friendly [6].
In previous papers [4-5], stamping techniques have been
proposed for the manufacturing process. The textile-based
MEMS were fabricated by a standard rubber stamping
procedure to deposit AgNPs onto the textiles. The problem of
this procedure is that the sensitivity, i.e. the gauge factor,
cannot be made reproducibly. In this paper, we focus on the
optimization of stamping processing parameters to obtain
device with the highest sensitivity. We investigate two
processing parameters: the applied stamping force and the
amount of applied AgNPs to the stamp surface. We show that
the stamping techniques can be optimized to achieve repeatable
high sensitivity textile-based MEMS.
II. METHOD
A. Device fabrication
Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram of the sensory unit of the
textile-based MEMS. It was designed with two different
conductive regions, namely the resistor and electrode regions.
The resistor and electrode will be built using different amount
of AgNPs. The dimension of the electrode part was 5 mm 5
mm, while the resistor part is 10 mm 2 mm.
The fabrication process was started by preparing a stamping
platform, consisting of a petri dish placed in the centre of a
digital weighing scale (SUGASA). First, both petri dish and
rubber stamp were marked with alignment indicators at certain
position in order to obtain a better alignment for multiple
stamping procedures. Second, one of the samples (scoured
cloth [7] with dimensions of 1.5cm 3cm) was placed in the
middle of the platform. AgNPs were then applied evenly on the
surface of the stamp using micropipette. In the first stamping
step, the inked stamp was pressed straight down onto the cloth
according to the alignment indicators that were put before. The
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 2014 IEEE Region 10 Symposium

applied force was measured by the digital weighing scale.

Afterwards, the stamp was removed and the sample was dried LCR LCR
at ambient temperature (T=25C). The above steps were Meter Meter
Load, F
Clamp
repeated for the second stamping step with the second rubber Probe Probe
stamp to produce the electrode part. Finally, the samples were (a)
annealed at 80 C in a dry oven. Sensor

electrode Bending

Angle,

resistor

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the device (b)

In the first experiment, we vary the force for the stamping

procedure in the range of 5N to 25N. The amount of AgNPs
deposited on the textiles was constant, with 0.5 uL for
electrode and resistor parts. The duration of the stamping step
is 60 seconds. Sensor calibration was then carried out to
calculate the sensitivity of the sensor fabricated with different
applied stamping force. the applied strain to the sensor. The stress at surface, s, was
calculated with the following equations:
We vary the amount of AgNPs in order to determine the
optimum volume of nanoparticles that can be deposited onto
the textile-based MEMS. The volume of AgNPs used in this
Figure 2. (a) Schematic diagram of the calibration setup of textile based
second experiment is in the range of 0.3L to 0.6L. In this MEMS (b) Actual photo of sensor calibration the textile-based MEMS
second experiment, the applied stamping force and duration
were set constant at 20 N and 60 seconds, respectively. The Stress, s = My/I (2)
sensor calibration was carried out to determine the effect of the
AgNPs amount to the sensor gauge factor. The gauge factor is Moment of inertia for rectangular, I = (bh^3)/12 (3)
defined as the ratio of relative resistance change to the applied
mechanical strain. Stress at surface, s= 6WL/(bh^2 ) (4)

B. Sensor Calibration
We calibrated textile-based MEMS using LCR meter (to
measure the resistance change) and protractor (to measure
angle). Sensor calibration setup, as shown in figure 2, was used
to measure the resistance change in the silver nanoparticles thin
layer as a function of the strain induced by the movement. The
experiment was conducted by attaching the textile-based
MEMS onto the surface of a ruler. Young modulus of the ruler
is initially measured for later calculation of the gauge factor.
The gauge factor of the sensor was determined by calculating
the ratio of relative resistance change to the applied mechanical
strain.
Fig. 2 shows the calibration setup to calculate the gauge
factor. We calibrated the sensor with different bending angle,
ranging from -30 to 30. The length, width, and thickness of
the plastic ruler are 4 cm, 2.8 cm, and 0.1 cm, respectively. The
strain was calculated from the bending angle and material
properties using the equation below [5]:
R/R0= GF. (1)
where R is the resistance change, equal to R-R0, R is the
measured resistance after strain is applied, R0 is the initial or
nominal resistance at 0 strain, GF is the Gauge Factor and is
where M refers to moment, y refers to distant from neutral axis
and is equal to half the thickness, h, of the ruler; and I is the
moment of inertia as shown in (2) and (3); L is the length of
the ruler; b is the width of the ruler; and W is the load
experienced at the sensing part. Equation (4) is derived from
(2) and (3). The load, W, experienced at the sensing part can be
estimated using the equation below:
W = 2EI/(L^2) (5)
where E is the Youngs modulus of the steel material of the
ruler, and is the bending angle due to the load F (Fig. 2b).
The strain can then be obtained from the following equation:
= /E (6)
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Sensor Calibration
Table 1 shows the results of the initial resistance of textile-
based MEMS with different applied force during stamping
procedures. The results show that if the applied force is
increased, the nominal resistance value will decrease. It is
understandable since when the pressure or applied force is

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 2014 IEEE Region 10 Symposium

high, more AgNPs will be deposited evenly into the cotton
fabrics. The AgNPs on the rubber stamp will be fully
transferred into cotton fabrics. Thus, the sensory unit will
become more conductive.
TABLE I. VALUE OF R0 WITH DIFFERENT AMOUNT OF FORCE DURING
STAMPING
AgNPs onto the surface of the textiles. The graph on figure 6
was illustrated to show the relationship between gauge factor
with volume of AgNPs. From the graph, it shows that 0.5 of
AgNPs is the optimum volume for applied AgNPs to fabricate
the textile-based MEMS.

Force/N 5N 10N 15N 20N 25N

R0/ 42.781 21.876 14.450 13.847 11.725

Fig. 3 described the resistance change as a function of the

applied mechanical strain. The graph shows that the resistance
changes of all the samples increased proportionally to the
applied strain, but the gauge factors of the samples are
different. If the applied force is as high as 25 N, the AgNPs
will be fully transferred to the textile. Thus, it does
significantly increase the conductivity. When the sensor was
bent according to the applied strain, the electron paths between Figure 4. The relationship between force applied with the gauge factor. The
optimum stamping force for textile-based MEMS is at 20N.
the nanoparticles do not significantly change because of the
condensed AgNPs. That is why the gauge factor is lower. On
the other hand, for the 5N applied stamping force, the AgNPs TABLE II. VALUE OF R0 WITH DIFFERENT AMOUNT OF AGNP DURING
are not fully transferred into the surface of the textile, resulting STAMPING
in low conductivity. When a strain was applied, the resistance
does not significantly change due to the failure of electron
current to travel among the scarce AgNPs. Amount of AgNp 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
placed on the
resistor/l
R0/ 34.952 29.800 24.947 24.887

Figure 3. Graph of the change of resistance over resistance against the strain
located at the devices for different amount of force exerted on the stamp.

Fig. 4 summarizes the relationship between applied

stamping force with the resulted gauge factor. As shown in the
figure, at 15N and 20N, there are optimum pressures or force
for the stamping step. If the pressure is higher or lower than
this optimum force value, the fabricated piezoresistor
transducer will have smaller gauge factor.
Figure 5. Graph of the change of resistance over resistance against the strain
Table II shows the effect of AgNPs volume towards the located at the devices for different amount of AgNP stamped on the samples
initial/nominal resistance. From the result, it shows that when
the amount of AgNPs is increased, the nominal resistance will B. Material Characterization
decrease and the piezoresistor became more conductive.
Each of the samples were observed under digital
Figure 5 shows the relationship between relative resistance microscope (HIROX KH-8700) to see the surface area
changes as a function of the applied strain for samples coverage by AgNPs on the fabric. The sample will then be
fabricated with different volume of stamped AgNPs. As a analysed to produce a quantitative data using ImageJ analysis.
result, it shows that 0.5 of AgNPs has highest gauge factor By using this software, we can also predict the surface area
compared to the others. This is due to the evenly applied

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 2014 IEEE Region 10 Symposium
covered by AgNPs attached to the fabric by filtering colour at
certain thresholds.
Figure 6. The relationship of the resulted gauge factor with volume of
applied AgNPs for stamping. The optimum volume of AgNPs for textile-
based MEMS is 0.5 .
As we can see in the Fig. 7a and 7c, there are some parts of
the textiles surfaces that are not covered by AgNPs. Hence,
AgNPs were not fully transferred onto the fabric. This proves
that using a small amount of AgNPs and less exerted force
during stamping would increase the nominal resistance.
a) b)
c) d)
e)
Figure 7. Image of textile seen under digital microscope (HIROX KH-8700
with150 magnification); (a) and (b): Resistor part of 5N and 25 N; (c) and
(d): Resistor part of 0.3l and 0.6l; (e): Electrode part.
Referring to Fig. 8, we can see the percentage of AgNPs
surface coverage on the fabric as a function of the different
processing parameters. The percentages of AgNPs on the
resistor made with each of the parameters were less than the
electrode. It was made on purpose to make the value of
electrode to be more conductive than the transducer part
(resistor). Meanwhile, we can see the value of the percentage
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covered area between each of the parameters where it shows
less AgNPs surface concentrations when the device is
fabricated using 5N than 25N of applied stamping force,
respectively. It also shows the result of the percentage area
between 0.3 l and 0.6l.
Figure 8. Percentange area of AgNP on the fabric (using ImageJ analysis).
R=resistor part [ R(0.5ul)=51.611%, R(0.6ul)= 56.500% , R(5N) =40.233% ,
R(25N) =54.088%, Electrode= 60.244% ]
IV. CONCLUSION
In order to produce more repeatable and reliable sensor
device, we investigate the processing parameter during
fabrication. The processing parameter was analyzed for the
electromechanical capability and then was characterized by the
image of the sensors. The gauge factor is the main figure of
merit in optimizing the stamping force and applied AgNP
volume.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is fully supported by a Fundamental
Research Grant Scheme (FRGS), Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia (UTM) from Ministry of Education (MoE),
Malaysia, under Project Vot. No. 4F099, Sub Project Code
J.130000.7836.4F099, and Vot. No. 4F328, Sub Project Code
R.J130000.7845.4F328 managed by UTM Research
Management Centre (RMC), and by Research University Grant
Tier-1 (GUP) under Projcet Vot. No. 03H30. Special thanks to
the Bio-Inspired Medical Devices Lab, FBME, and Medical
Devices and Technology Group (MediTeg) under the
leadership of Prof. Mohd. Rafiq bin Dato Abdul Kadir for
contribution of the idea and the assistance.
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