Nano-structured gold strain gauge arrays on PDMS for highly sensitive nems pressure sensor skin

This work demonstrates highly sensitive miniaturized nanostructured flexible pressure sensing microdevice on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer for various applications, such as artificial e-skin for haptic devices, soft robotic actuator embedded with self-sufficient pressure sensitive awareness system, body implantable catheter system for internal health monitoring, etc. This microdevice has arrays of nanostructured gold strain gauges' sensor and has been modeled in COMSOL Multiphysics software. Each sensor on the skin consists of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) diaphragm and a resistive strain gauge made of thin film gold structure. The thin film resistive nanostructure has been fabricated using sputtering, electron-beam lithography and soft micromachining technique on PDMS. A sensitivity of 0.30/KPa is obtained over a linear range of 3KPa for 30μm thick polydimethylsiloxane film for individual pressure sensor on the skin