Abstract
This paper presents the development of tactile sensors using the sol-gel process to deposit a PZT thin-film from 250 nm to 1 μm on a flexible stainless steel substrate. The PZT thin-film tactile sensor can be used to measure human pulses from several areas, including carotid, brachial, finger, ankle, radial artery, and the apical region. Flexible PZT tactile sensors can overcome the diverse topology of various human regions and sense the corresponding signals from human bodies. The measured arterial pulse waveform can be used to diagnose hypertension and cardiac failure in patients. The proposed sensors have several advantages, such as flexibility, reliability, high strain, low cost, simple fabrication, and low temperature processing. The PZT thin-film deposition process includes a pyrolysis process at 150 °C/500 °C for 10/5 min, followed by an annealing process at 650 °C for 10 min. Finally, the consistent pulse wave velocity (PWV) was demonstrated based on human pulse measurements from apical to radial, brachial to radial, and radial to ankle. It is characterized that the sensitivity of our PZT-based tactile sensor was approximately 0.798 mV/g.
Highlights
Capacitive-based, piezoresistive-based, and piezoelectric-based sensors are commonly used for tactile sensing
A flexible membrane and gap are typically included in a capacitive-based sensor, which can be widely used for applications in mobile robot contact force arrays [1], pressure sensors [2,3], proximity sensors [4], and tactile sensing arrays [5]
PZT thin-film was deposited on the flexible stainless steel substrate to enable broad pulse detection capability for various human body regions, such as the carotid region, the brachial region, the finger, the ankle artery, the radial artery, and the apical region
Summary
Capacitive-based, piezoresistive-based, and piezoelectric-based sensors are commonly used for tactile sensing. Accurate Zr/Ti element composition can be controlled in the sol-gel deposition process; a composite material with a high ferroelectric property (Zr/Ti with a ratio of 52:48) can be obtained Various sensors, such as piezoelectric-based sensors [21,22,23,24,25], optical sensors [26,27,28,29], and laser. The fabricated tactile sensors have high sensitivity and fast strain response, and the flexible substrate enabled rugged human body monitoring, such as sensing human pulses at various topologies of several human artery areas. The PZT-based tactile sensors fabricated using the novel sol-gel process on a flexible stainless steel substrate can be used as rugged human pulse sensors with high performance. The flexible PZT tactile sensor to apply energy harvesting [33], large area tactile sensors array [34], robot hard [5], touch sensor [35], pressure sensor [36] and fingerprint [37]
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