Aluminum nitride based 3D, piezoelectric, tactile sensor

Abstract

A 3D tactile sensing element concept based on tridimensional piezoelectric aluminum nitride (AlN) membranes is presented. Detection modes for normal and shear forces are investigated by FEM simulations. Based on these results a design of a functionalized sensing system is performed. The simulation focuses on the mechanical response of pyramidal structures on force transmission across the whole membrane surface. Therefore, an embedded device configuration is defined. The overall aim of these investigations is to find an optimized sensor electrode configuration and to verify the ability to detect normal and shear forces with one element. Additionally, first high aspect ratio pyramidal AlN membrane structures have been successfully fabricated.

2D-Modeling for the temperature-composition dependent thermal-conductivity of AlmNn compounded semiconductor materials

“…Here, m is the Al mole fraction in the composite alloy and mn. For example, AlN based semiconductor materials play a significant potential applications in opto-electrics operating at deep ultraviolet since these materials' high thermal conductivity properties [3][4][5][6] and [7]. However, so far its knowledge is very limited in the field of the quantitative description of thermal conductivities with respect to Al mole fraction m and temperature T in composite semiconductor of Al m N n .…”

Design and simulation of MEMS based 5-DOF tactile force sensor

“…Among the identified various tactile sensing principles, capacitive type tactile sensing [1], [8], piezoelectric type sensing [9], piezoresistive type tactile sensing [10], [11], mechanical strain gauges [12] and optical type tactile sensing [13], [14] can be identified as most common types available. They have their own pros and cons based on their applications and scale [2].…”

“…Together with the discussion of sensor resolution, it is important to discuss about the degree of freedom (DOF). Most of available MEMS tactile sensor measurements are in limited number of DOFs [13], [9], [11]. MEMS based tactile sensors for higher number of degrees of freedom are very infrequent and they just measure 3 linear DOFs and some more rotational DOFs [10].…”

“…Piezoresistive sensing principle shows more reliable measurements in miniaturized application [9]. Following chapters will discuss about the structural design of the proposed sensor, sensing principle and Finite Element Analysis of structural stability and piezoresistivity.…”

A New Approach in Design and Operating Principle of Silicone Tactile Sensor

“…Petropoulos et al (2009) fabricated a capacitive type tactile sensor using copper clad laminated with flexible polyimide substrates (Kapton). Polster and Hoffmann (2009) proposed a tactile sensor based on tridimensional piezoelectric Aluminum Nitride (AIN) membranes. By analyzing strengths and weaknesses of the above mentioned researches, a new tactile sensor based on a silicone material combined with image analysis technique was proposed in this study.…”