Biomimetic sensing

Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology is enabling the mass production of microsensors in the same way as integrated circuits, widely used in our daily life and industries. However, the sensitivity of MEMS sensors cannot yet satisfy the requirements for some special applications such as infrared detection, hydrodynamic imaging and molecular sensing. Compared to artificial sensors, biological sensing system are advantageous in sensitivity, stability and system complexity. For example, Melanophila beetles with intact pit organs show responses to IR stimuli with an intensity of 50 mW cm^-2, which is more than 100 times sensitive than commercial IR sensors. The small ears with a distance of several hundred micrometers can resolve an acoustic difference in time of 50 ns, while humans can only resolve 4-8 ms. The sensory hairs in spiders show unprecedented absolute detection limit of only 10^-20J, which can be thought as a fraction of energy contained only a single quantum of green light. Recently, Biomimetic sensing is an emerging interdisciplinary paradigm in which the sensing mechanism of biological molecule, cell, tissue and organs are mimicked for development of smart sensing material, structure, device and systems. By investigating the mechanisms of biosensing and solving the technological difficulties in micro/nanofabrication, it is promising to greatly improve the performance of sensors such as IR, hydrophone, navigation, chemical, and imaging sensors.  

With the support from NSFC and Beijing nova program, we are focusing on the lateral line system of the blind cave fish, striving to clarify the high-sensitive hydrodynamic sensing mechanism, positioning mechanism for moving objects, and noise-enhanced signal to noise ratio (SNR) mechanism. The biomimetic artificial lateral line system and high-sensitive hydrophone devices have potential application in aero and nautical environments. 

Yonggang Jiang, 
Institute of Bionics and Micro-Nanosystems