Extensive Sensitivity Enhancement in Stacked Capacitive Tactile Sensors

The deformable layer of a stacked capacitive tactile sensor (CTS) was modified from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to air to enhance its detection sensitivity. With the reduced structural rigidity, the upper layer deformed towards the middle layer of the sandwich structure easily, enabling a large capacitance change, which represented a high detection sensitivity with extensive enhancement. Because the stacked CTS exhibited at least quadrupled spatial resolution compared with a conventional non-stacked one, the proposed CTS made its application practical. Comprehensive design, simulation, fabrication, detection, and analysis of the CTS were performed in this work.