Micromachines 2012, 3(2), 315-324; doi:10.3390/mi3020315
Article

Flexible Tactile Sensor Using Polyurethane Thin Film

Masato Suzuki* email, Tomokazu Takahashiemail and Seiji Aoyagiemail
Faculty of Engineering Science, Kansai University, 3-3-35 Yamate-cho, Suita, Osaka 564-8680, Japan
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 11 February 2012; in revised form: 5 March 2012 / Accepted: 13 March 2012 / Published: 10 April 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymer MEMS)
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Abstract: 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.
Keywords: tactile sensor; capacitive sensor; poly-urethane; elastomer; thin film

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Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Suzuki, M.; Takahashi, T.; Aoyagi, S. Flexible Tactile Sensor Using Polyurethane Thin Film. Micromachines 2012, 3, 315-324.

AMA Style

Suzuki M, Takahashi T, Aoyagi S. Flexible Tactile Sensor Using Polyurethane Thin Film. Micromachines. 2012; 3(2):315-324.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Suzuki, Masato; Takahashi, Tomokazu; Aoyagi, Seiji. 2012. "Flexible Tactile Sensor Using Polyurethane Thin Film." Micromachines 3, no. 2: 315-324.

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