Humidity monitoring of exhaled breath has emerged as a vital approach for noninvasive respiratory health assessment, underscoring the need for sensitive and reliable humidity sensors. Despite its high conductivity and hydrophilic functional groups, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) often undergoes irreversible moisture adsorption and gradual oxidation by residual water, resulting in sensitivity degradation and long-term instability during cycling. In this study, a montmorillonite/reduced graphene oxide (MMT/rGO) composite is developed as a room-temperature humidity-sensing material, exhibiting an optimized response of 115%, more than 14 times higher than that of pristine rGO. This superior performance originates from the synergistic interaction between the reversible MMT swelling and the conductive rGO network near the electrical percolation transition, which ensures excellent stability and repeatability under repeated humidity cycles. These findings suggest that the MMT/rGO composite provides a cost-effective and biocompatible platform for next-generation wearable humidity sensors capable of continuous respiratory monitoring.

We have proposed and demonstrated a fiber optic RH (relative humidity) sensor based on fiber Bragg grating covered with a polyimide film. As the polyimide film absolves the moisture in the air, its volume expands. As a result, the grating period of the FBG (fiber Bragg grating) covered with a polyimide film becomes wide and the Bragg wavelength is shifted. The sensor is implemented by fixing a 30 ㎛ thickness polyimide film on the surface of an optical fiber grating using an adhesive, and the characteristics of the device according to humidity are analyzed. The fabricated FBG RH sensor showed a high sensitivity of 0.0186 nm/RH% and a wide measurement range from 30% to 90%. The influence of environmental temperature on the characteristics of the RH sensor was also measured and analyzed. The feasibility of commercialization is presented.

Capacitive-type humidity sensors with a high sensitivity and fast response/recovery times have attracted a great attention in non-contact respiration biological signal monitoring applications. However, complicated fabrication processes involving high-temperature heat treatment for the hygroscopic film is essential in the conventional ceramic-based humidity sensors. In this study, a non-toxic ceramic/metal halide (BaTiO₃(BT)/NaCl) humidity sensor was prepared at room temperature using a solvent-free aerosol deposition process (AD) without any additional process. Currently prepared BT/NaCl humidity sensor shows an excellent sensitivity (245 pF/RH%) and superior response/recovery times (3s/4s) due to the NaCl ionization effect resulting in an immense interfacial polarization. Furthermore, the non-contact respiration signal variation using the BT/NaCl sensor was determined to be over 700% by maintaining the distance of 20 cm between the individual and the sensor. Through the AD-fabricated sensor in this study, we expect to develop a non-contact biological signal monitoring system that can be applied to various fields such as respiratory disease detection and management, infant respiratory signal observation, and touchless skin moisture sensing button.

Controlling ambient humid condition through high performance humidity sensors has become important for various fields, including industrial process, food storage, and the preservation of historic remains. Although aerosol deposited humidity sensors using ceramic BaTiO₃ (BT) material have been widely studied because of their longtime stability, there remain critical disadvantages, such as low sensitivity, low linearity, and slow response/recovery time in case of the sensors fabricated at room temperature. To achieve superior humidity sensing properties even at room temperature condition, BT-Cu composite films utilizing aerosol deposition (AD) process have been proposed based on the percolation theory. The BT-Cu composite films showed gradually improved sensing properties until the Cu concentration reached 15 wt% in the composite film. However, the excessive Cu (above 30 wt%) containing BT-Cu composite films showed a rapid decrease of the sensing properties. The results of observed surface morphology of the AD fabricated composite films, to figure out the metal filler effect, showed correlation between surface topography as well as size and the amount of open pores according to the metal filler content. Overall, it is very important not only dielectric constant of the humidity sensing films but also microstructures, because they affect either the variation range of capacitance by ambient humidity or adsorption/desorption of ambient humidity onto/from the humidity sensing films.

Electrode pattern effects on the capacitive humidity sensor were investigated. The fabrication of the capacitive humidity sensor was formed with three steps. The bottom electrode was formed on the silicon substrate with Pt/Ti thin layer by using shadow mask and e-beam evaporator. The photosensitive polyimide was formed on the bottom electrode by using photolithography process as a humidity sensitive thin film. The upper electrode was formed on the polyimide thin film with Pt/Ti thin layer by using e-beam evaporator and lift-off method. Three electrode patterns, such as circle, square, and triangle pattern, were used and changed the sizes to investigate the effects. The capacitances of the sensors were decreased 622 to 584 pF with the area decreament of patterns 250,000 to 196,250 μm2. From these results, a capacitive humidity sensor with photo sensitive polyimide is expected to be applied to a high sensitive humidity sensor.

This research, integratable capacitive relative humidity sensor was produced using polyimide on glass substrate. Also, at the time of upper electrode formation, upper electrode grain size was affected by giving changes to sputtering condition. Through this analyzing electrical characteristics affect from capacitive relative humidity sensor was possible. Capacitance of capacitive relative humidity sensor was 330 pF, linearity of 0.6%FS and it showed less than 3% of low hysterisis. Specially, hysterisis was affected more from interface than interstitial. Also was affected by the grain size which is one of the formation condition of upper electrode.