Design and Fabrication of the Polyimide-Based Flexible MEMS Capacitive Tactile Force Sensor

Abstract

This paper presents a new capacitive tactile sensor for robotics or prosthetic applications and introduces a new flexible MEMS technique to fabricate it on liquid spin-coated polyimide substrate. The sensor structure consists of organic and inorganic multilayer thin films. The process was properly integrated according to the structure characteristic of sensor and its materials processable properties of the sensor, and the optimized process is simple, cost-effective and compatible with common MEMS technology. Especially, the first introduction of the PDMS interlayer film between the carrier and the polyimide substrate greatly facilitates the separation of the polyimide-based flexible capacitive tactile sensor. The finished sensor is smart, robust, twistable, and it can be attached on the arbitrary shape surfaces for the simultaneous measurement of both normal and shear force.