High reliable capacitive pressure sensor without external interference

Abstract

The pressure sensor market is growing year by year, and the demand for capacitive pressure sensors with high durability is soaring. However, conventional capacitive pressure sensors had a fatal problem in which sensing performance changes depending on the contact material. In this study, the cause of sensing performance instability due to contact material of existing capacitive sensor was identified due to wide electrode gap and attempted to solve the deterioration of detection performance by reducing the gap between electrodes. As a result, the electrode spacing at a level that can reliably detect pressure on various contact materials was designed and implemented. The results showed that an unprecedented level of electrode spacing was achieved for capacitive pressure sensors, and the sensor performance verification confirmed that the proposed sensor could reliably detect pressure without the effect of the sensing material. The sensor reveals a new outlook for capacitive sensors that can be used as soft robotics as well as touch areas where pressure sensors were used.