Overshooting the critical values can occur in any systems surrounding us - temperature control, mechanical regulations, or electronic components. Detecting the overshoots of critical conditions in real-time is crucial to prevent damage to the framework.
In general, every sensor can work as a sensor measuring the critical conditions, when the sensor is damaged. This represents a disadvantage as the majority of sensors are expensive and create a loss of finances.
The preparation method of glass-coated MicroWires represents a solution for critical condition sensors. Kilometers of MicroWires can be prepared in just minutes creating a thousand sensors capable of critical conditions measurements. The tailor-made sensing device picking up the unique signal from the MicroWire creates a solution for detecting the structural health of the products that have incorporated MicroWire sensors. Such a sensor with a chemically determined composition can inform the customer about overshoot temperature, pressure, vibrations, and more.
The main added value can represent the possibility of informing the seller if the customer handled the device with care. If not, the incorporated MicroWire hidden from the human eye will be damaged and lose its signal to the provided sensing system.
There are various possibilities to utilize the MicroWire as a safety-critical part to inform a user of the structural health conditions of a sensor that can be damaged and provide low-cost critical condition monitoring. Sensor monitoring can be continuous or on demand, depending on the user’s requirements.
Contactless sensing with Real-Time Notification
Magnetically Bistable MicroWires: Properties and Applications for Magnetic Field, Temperature, and Stress Sensing
R. Varga, P. Klein, R. Sabol, K. Richter, R. Hudak, I. Polaček, D. Praslička, M. Šmelko, J. Hudak, I. Mikita, G. A. Badini-Confalonieri, R. El Kammouni, M. Vazquez
Amorphous glass-coated microwires with positive magnetostriction are characterized by the magnetic bistability where the switching between the two stable magnetic states appears at the switching field. The switching field is sensitive to the external parameters like magnetic field, temperature, mechanical stress, etc., which gives us possibility to employ the microwires as a miniaturized sensing elements for the mentioned parameters. Apart from this, there are many other advantages of microwires: the small dimensions (which allows them to be introduced inside various materials), glass-coating (that provides biocompatibility and protection against chemically aggressive environment), magnetic nature (for contactless sensing), simple production process (that allows very efficient production of large amount of wires in a short time), and many more favorable properties. Within this chapter an overview of various parameters that affect the switching field of bistable microwires is given. Four different possibilities to use bistable microwires as sensors are shown: sensors of magnetic field, wide-range temperature sensors, selected temperature sensors for biomedical applications as well as stress sensor. At the end of each section, real applications of such sensors are demonstrated.
Object equipped with the magnetically bistable MicroWire creates a unique signal that can be contactlessly measured with an external sensing system. After exceeding a critical value the MiroWire’s signal is permanently changed, or in extreme conditions can even disappear. The user is notified via the dedicated software.
Conclusion:
MicroWire represents a unique solution that deals with any kind of real-time sensing of changes in physical quantity. With a combination of the right composition and correct software setting the MicroWire can notify the user about the undesirable event in advance.