A Robust and Sensitive Silicon-MEMS Tactile-Imager with Scratch Resistant Surface and Over-Range Protection

In this paper, a robust and sensitive silicon-MEMS tactile-imager which realizes scratch resistance and over-range protection is presented. This concept of tactile-imager can solve the fragility problem of sensitive structure without any protective materials, using backside silicon surface as contact-face. Also, backside contact-face is very suitable for tactile sensors since electronic terminals in the circuits can be removed from the contact-face side. Fabricated tactile-imager showed high robustness in scratch resistance tests with #120 emery-papers. In addition, over-ranged input (-1.68N) applied to 10 mum-silicon diaphragm was safely received. Robustness of the tactile-imager has been much improved using the concept without degradation of the original force sensitivity and spatial resolution.