A flexible capacitive-type tactile sensor has been proposed and fabricated. The sensor is made up of copper electrodes and PDMS (polydimethylsilane) plates. The proposed sensor is based on capacitive transduction method to take an advantage of immunity to temperature dependency. The proposed sensor has two additional advantages: flexibility and compatibility with CMOS circuits.
The fabrication of this sensor requires two basic processes. First, the process that enhances the adhesion between PDMS plates and copper electrodes are required. Second, thin PDMS film fabrication process and its patterning process are developed. The fabricated sensor has operated over the pressure range of 50Pa~10kPa. The sensitivity of the sensor is 64mV/kPa and the resolution of pressure is 50Pa.
