IC-Integrated Flexible Shear-Stress Sensor Skin

摘要

This paper reports the first IC-integrated flexible shear-stresssensor skin. By integrating both bias and signal-conditioningcircuitry on-chip, the wiring of the MEMS skin is significantlysimplified and reliability is improved. The circuit is first madeby a commercial IC foundry (I.e., Mitel) and micromachining isdone on the CMOS wafers to form the skins. We furtherdemonstrated the use of the sensor skin by packaging it on asemi-cylindrical aluminum block and tested it in a wind tunnel.In our experiment, the skin has successfully identified both theflow separation and stagnation points. It is believed that the Icintegratedsmart skin technology demonstrated here can beapplied to many other interesting applications in biomedicine,wearable microsystems, robotics and so on.