Abstract
Nowadays the world of sensors is gaining a primary importance in the electronics field, thanks to the boom of the smartphones and IoT market. Capacitive sensors are widely involved in the most of applications, from the biomedical to the gaming industry, and they can sense a wide variety of physical quantities. In this work we focused on force sensing capacitive sensors, trying to mix two of the most in-fashion markets, sensors and polymers. Polymers industry is constantly growing and, by the constant synthesis of new bio-based molecules, it will quickly enter the most of the technology markets. We made a soft capacitive force sensor, by inserting a coplanar capacitor in a polymeric wafer structure. The involved technology is derived from the touch-sensing technique, usually involved in appliances’ user interfaces. This sensor is easy to make and cheap, and it was tested with a force of 1 N. It is waterproof and non-sensitive to moisture variation in the outer environment. It shown a sensitivity of 172 fF/N, with a resolution of 80 mN. As it is only a preliminary study, more investigations are needed in order to obtain a deeper characterization versus different environment conditions and with higher force stimuli. It will be also relevant to evaluate the behavior of the sensor by using different polymers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ha, D., De Vries, W.N., John, S.W.M., Irazoqui, P.P., Chappell, W.J.: Polymer-based miniature flexible capacitive pressure sensor for intraocular pressure (IOP) monitoring inside a mouse eye. Biomed. Microdevices 14, 207–215 (2012)
Dai, Y., Abiri, A., Liu, S., Paydar, O., Sohn, H., Dutson, E.P., Grundfest, W.S., Candler, R.N.: Grasper integrated tri-axial force sensor system for robotic minimally invasive surgery. In: Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society EMBS, pp. 3936–3939 (2017)
Wei, Y., Xu, Q.: Design of a PVDF-MFC force sensor for robot-assisted single cell microinjection. IEEE Sens. J. 17, 3975–3982 (2017)
Joo, Y., Yoon, J., Ha, J., Kim, T., Lee, S., Lee, B., Pang, C., Hong, Y.: Highly sensitive and bendable capacitive pressure sensor and its application to 1 V operation pressure-sensitive transistor. Adv. Electron. Mater. 3, 1–10 (2017)
Kim, J., Kwak, Y.H., Kim, W., Park, K., Pak, J.J., Kim, K.: Flexible force sensor based input device for gesture recognition applicable to augmented and virtual realities. In: 2017 14th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence, pp. 271–273 (2017)
Zhuo, B., Chen, S., Guo, X.: Micro structuring polydimethylsiloxane elastomer film with 3D printed mold for low cost and high sensitivity flexible capacitive pressure sensor. In: 2017 IEEE Electron Devices Technology and Manufacturing Conference EDTM 2017—Proceedings, vol. 8, pp. 148–149 (2017)
Qin, H., Cai, Y., Dong, J., Lee, Y.-S.: Direct printing of capacitive touch sensors on flexible substrates by additive e-jet printing with silver nanoinks. J. Manuf. Sci. Eng. 139, 31011 (2016)
Zhuo, B., Chen, S., Zhao, M., Guo, X.: High sensitivity flexible capacitive pressure sensor using polydimethylsiloxane elastomer dielectric layer micro-structured by 3-D printed mold. IEEE J. Electron Devices Soc. 5, 219–223 (2017)
Fernandes, J., Jiang, H.: Three-axis capacitive touch-force sensor for clinical breast examination simulators. IEEE Sens. J. 7231–7238 (2017)
Walker, G.: Touch sensing. In: Interactive Displays: Natural Human-Interface Technologies, pp. 27–105 (2014)
Mamishev, A.V., Sundara-Rajan, K., Yang, F., Du, Y., Zahn, M.: Interdigital sensors and transducers. Proc. IEEE 92, 808–844 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bodini, A., Sardini, E., Serpelloni, M., Pandini, S. (2019). Novel Coplanar Capacitive Force Sensor for Biomedical Applications: A Preliminary Study. In: Andò, B., et al. Sensors. CNS 2018. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 539. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04324-7_41
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04324-7_41
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04323-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04324-7
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)