Fabrication of the Flexible Sensor Using SOI Wafer by Removing the Thick Silicon Layer

In this paper, we propose a method to fabricate a flexible sensor, which uses thin single crystal silicon devices for sensing. In this method, we formed sensing devices on the top of an SOI wafer and removed a thick silicon layer from it to make the sensor flexible. To protect the thin silicon structure during the process, we covered it with an elastic material. By using this method and the sensing mechanism we proposed in MEMS’ 05 [ 1], we fabricated a 2.0mm thick flexible tactile sensor with 290 nm thick piezoresistive cantilevers. We measured shear stresses by using this flexible sensor and confirmed its effectiveness.