An inkjet printed seismic sensor

In this paper an inkjet printed sensor in the mesoscale is presented with the aim to investigate its behavior as accelerometer in the low frequency domain typical of inertial stimuli coming from human caused and seismic phenomena. The accelerometer consists of a PET membrane clamped by four spring-legs to a fixed support. The sensing readout strategy is implemented through four inkjet printed strain gauges. Advantages of the approach proposed are mainly related to the low frequency operation due to the flexible membrane and the proof mass adopted. Moreover, the adopted low cost direct printing technology allows for the realization of the strain gauges directly into the PET membrane. The device has been characterized and shows good performances especially taking into account its low cost and disposable characteristics.