Flexible Tactile Sensor Using Polyurethane Thin Film

Micromachines

Masato Suzuki¹  Tomokazu Takahashi² 

[1] Faculty of Engineering Science, Kansai University, 3-3-35 Yamate-cho, Suita, Osaka 564-8680, Japan;

关键词: tactile sensor;    capacitive sensor;    poly-urethane;    elastomer;    thin film;   

DOI  :  10.3390/mi3020315

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A novel capacitive tactile sensor using a polyurethane thin film is proposed in this paper. In previous studies, capacitive tactile sensors generally had an air gap between two electrodes in order to enhance the sensitivity. In this study, there is only polyurethane thin film and no air gap between the electrodes. The sensitivity of this sensor is higher than the previous capacitive tactile sensors because the polyurethane is a fairly flexible elastomer and the film is very thin (about 1 µm). The polyurethane film is formed by spin-coating and etched back from 6 µm to 1 µm using 48% sulfuric acid. As a result of evaluation, the sensitivity of the developed sensor (diameter is 1 mm) is 1.3 pF/Pa (800 pF/N considering the sensing area). Young’s modulus of the thin polyurethane film was estimated to be 20 kPa.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.