학술논문

Tactile Sensing With Scalable Capacitive Sensor Arrays on Flexible Substrates
Document Type
Periodical
Source
Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems J. Microelectromech. Syst. Microelectromechanical Systems, Journal of. 30(6):915-929 Dec, 2021
Subject
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Tactile sensors
Sensor arrays
Robot sensing systems
Capacitive sensors
Fabrication
Sensor phenomena and characterization
Flexible electronics
robot sensing systems
sensor arrays
capacitive sensors
flexible electronics
RDL
Language
ISSN
1057-7157
1941-0158
Abstract
The development of advanced, human like tactile sensing capabilities is one of the key challenges for next generation robots or prosthetics. Tactile sensors arrays will need to exhibit the desired sensing capabilities, show robustness to external influences as well as good approaches for the integration of large amounts of sensors. We present a tactile sensor array technology, based on the fabrication of a flexible interconnection substrate containing directly integrated tactile sensors. This approach has several advantages: interconnection substrate technology is widely available making upscaling of sensor arrays easy to a large amount of sensors and/or large sensing areas, the direct integration of sensors allows for a simple and very compact approach to densely packed sensor arrays and the structured flexible substrate enables integration into complex, three-dimensional bodies. We present sensors with a size of $600~\mu \text{m}$ and arrays of up to $12\times12$ individually addressable sensors. The sensors have a wide measurement range; free membrane deformation results in a high sensitivity of 2.6 kPa −1 respectively 2600 N −1 for small applied pressures (0–0.6 kPa) whereas deforming polymer studs extend the measurement range for larger applied pressures (5–25 kPa) with a sensitivity of 0.022 kPa −1 respectively 22 N −1 . A statistical study of six sensor arrays from three wafers showed repeatable performance of the fabricated structures and robustness tests proved the stable sensing conditions over 10’000 cycles. [2021-0072]