A Planar Developable Double Corrugation Surface Enabled Stretchable Heart Rate Sensing System

Soft, flexible, and stretchable devices have become widely used in wearable electronics such as health monitoring over the past decades. Despite the rapid development of flexible devices, silicon-based rigid components are still the mainstream in circuit and sensing technology because of their high performance and low cost. Origami-based circuit boards show promise in combining rigid electronic components and stretchable structures for better flexible electronic devices. This paper investigates a type of origami—a tessellation with a unit cell composed of four parallelograms, named planar developable double corrugation (PDDC) surface, and its employment in a stretchable electronic system. Theoretically, we prove that as a particular pattern of PDDC surface, compared with another famous origami pattern called Miura-ori, Barreto’s Mars tessellation presents high compatibility with traditional electronic devices in shape as it includes square facets. Experimentally, we test a stretchable heart rate sensing system based on Barreto’s Mars tessellation. With an optimized structure, all the electronic components except the battery are able to be mounted on the stretchable portion. The rich field of origami patterns indicates a great potential to accommodate various sensors for next-generation smart garments.