Graphene piezoresistive flexible force sensor for harsh condition

Abstract

Flexible Graphene piezoresistive MEMS force sensors have been attracting wide attention for applications in bio-medical robots, robotic flies, minimal invasive surgeries and soft robotics for micromanipulation because of their flexibility, high sensitivity and temperature compatibility. The key objective of this research is to analyze the effect of temperature on sensitivity on the designed and simulated MEMS Force sensor through finite element analysis. In this work, flexibility is introduced in MEMS force sensor by utilizing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as substrate material and graphene as piezoresistors. The designed model of force sensor detects the applied force in micro-Newton range by utilizing piezoresistive sensing mechanism connected in Wheatstone bridge configuration. At 0°C,40°C and 80°C the reported sensitivity are 2.24mV/μN,2.26mV/μN and 2.28mV/μN respectively. So, it can be concluded that as the temperature increases in graphene piezorsesitive based force sensor sensitivity enhances by 0.89% which makes it reliable for harsh conditions