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The purpose of this paper is to explain in detail the optimization of the sensitivity versus the power consumption of a pressure microsensor using multi-objective genetic algorithms.

The tradeoff between sensitivity and power consumption is analyzed and the Pareto frontier is identified by using NSGA-II, AMGA-II and ɛ-MOEA methods.

Comparison results demonstrate that NSGA-II provides optimal solutions over the entire design space for spread metric analysis, and AMGA-II is better for convergence metric analysis.

This paper provides a new multiobjective optimization tool for the designers of low power pressure microsensors.

This paper aims to report an insightful portable microfluidic system for rapid and selective sensing of Hg²⁺ in the picomolar (pM) concentration using microcantilever-based piezoresistive sensor. The detection time for various laboratory-based techniques is generally 12–24 h. The majority of modules used in the proposed platform are battery oriented; therefore, they are portable and handy to carry-out on-field investigations.

In this study, the authors have incorporated the benefit of three technologies, i.e. thin-film, nanoparticles (NPs) and micro-electro-mechanical systems, to selectively capture the Hg²⁺ at the pM concentration. The morphology and topography of the proposed sensor are characterized using field emission scanning electron microscopy and verification of the experimental results using energy dispersive X-ray.

The proposed portable microfluidic system is able to perform the detection in 5 min with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.163 ng (0.81 pM/mL) for Hg²⁺, which perfectly describes its excellent performance over other reported techniques.

A microcantilever-based technology is perfect for on-site detection, and a LOD of 0.163 ng (0.81 pM/mL) is outstanding compared to other techniques, but the fabrication of microcantilever sensor is complex.

Many researchers used NPs for heavy metal ions sensing, but the excess usage and industrialization of NPs are rapidly expanding harmful consequences on the human life and nature. Also, the LOD of the NPs-based method is limited to nanomolar concentration. The suggested microfluidic system used the benefit of thin-film and microcantilever devices to provide advancement over the NPs-based approach and it has a selective sensing in pM concentration.

This study attempts to quantify the loss of accuracy that arises after packaging and during the life of the IC device. To identify a solution to the problem of mismatch in voltage dividers, the characterisation of the amount of stress associated with commercially available moulding compounds was performed by means of silicon integrated strain gauges. In addition, the influence of the voltage divider lay‐out was measured with a specifically designed test pattern. The possibility of producing circuits with an accuracy level better than 0·1% without trimming was demonstrated.

Wearable electronics is an emerging technology predicted to become a 50B$ industry by 2018. Components and circuits will be highly integrated into clothing and other apparel. One crucial factor is the need for highly robust, flexible printed circuit tracks with sufficiently high electrical conductivity. The fact that metal-based tracks tend to suffer from fatigue failure has driven the development of alternative materials. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Alternative materials are organic conductors and carbon nanotubes. The latter has a great flexibility and intrinsic strength. While nanotubes can be solubilised and printed using ink-jet techniques, this usually requires polymer additives. The paper has therefore sought to develop a novel solvent-free dry-ink.

The paper has found that it is possible to directly transfer from a nanotube growth substrate, via a hard print stamp head, onto a flexible rubber substrate and that one loading of the stamp can give many individual prints before exhaustion: the dry-ink stamp face effectively de-layers by a set amount each time a print is made. Many consecutive, highly consistent and uniform prints can be made using this approach. When printed onto natural rubber, the printed tracks are very robust and can be stretched to 100 per cent strain without permanent damage. The electrical conductivity can be improved by a simple alcohol treatment to consolidate the fibers and by iodine doping reaching 38 S · cm−1.

The findings offer an economical way to print highly robust electrically conductive tracks of carbon nanotubes directly onto flexible substrates.

The use of conductive yarns or wires to design and construct fabric-based strain sensors is a research area that is gaining much attention in recent years. This is based on a profound theory that conductive yarns will have a variation in resistance if subjected to tension. What is not clear is to which types of conductive yarns are most suited to delivering the right sensitivity. The purpose of this paper is to look at strain sensors knitted with conductive composite and coated yarns which include core spun, blended, coated and commingled yarns. The conductive components are stainless steel and silver coating respectively with polyester as the nonconductive part. Using Stoll CMS 530 flat knitting machine, five samples each were knitted with the mentioned yarn categories using 1×1 rib structure. Sensitivity tests were carried out on the samples. Piezoresistive response of the samples reveals that yarns with heterogeneous external structures showed both an increase and a decrease in resistance, whereas those with homogenous structures responded linearly to stress. Stainless steel based yarns also had higher piezoresistive range compared to the silver-coated ones. However, comparing all the knitted samples, silver-coated yarn (SCY) proved to be more suitable for strain sensor as its response to tension was unidirectional with an appreciable range of change in resistance.

Conductive composite yarns, namely, core spun yarn (CSY1), core spun yarn (CSY2), silver-coated blended yarn (SCBY), staple fiber blended yarn (SFBY) and commingled yarn (CMY) were sourced based on specifications and used to knit strain sensor samples. Electro-mechanical properties were investigated by stretching on a fabric tensile machine to ascertain their suitability for a textile strain sensor.

In order to generate usable signal for a strain sensor for a conductive yarn, it must have persistent and consistent conductive links, both externally and internally. In the case of composite yarns such as SFBY, SCBY and CMY where there were no consistent alignment and inter-yarn contact, resistance change fluctuated. Among all six different types of yarns used, SCY presented the most suitable result as its response to tension was unidirectional with an appreciable range of change in resistance.

This is an original research carried out by the authors who studied the electro-mechanical properties of some composite conductive yarns that have not been studied before in textile strain sensor research. Detailed research methods, results and interpretation of the results have thus been presented.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new method for the design of a pressure sensor in the hyperbaric environment.

The new method focuses on two vital parameters that are closely related to the output and sensitivity of the sensor. The rectangular diaphragm structure is adopted, and the piezoresistors are planted on the surface accordingly. To verify the effect of the method, a contrastive sensor chip is fabricated in a conventional way, and two types of sensor chips are tested at the same time.

The new method for the design of a pressure sensor is advisable and favorable. The sensor fabricated by the method possesses outstanding high sensitivity and a wide measurement range.

This paper provides a new idea for increasing the measurement range of the pressure sensor with an acceptable sacrifice of sensitivity.

It is significant to know the real-time indexes about the turbulence flow of the ocean system, which has a deep influence on ocean productivity, distribution of the ocean populations and transmission of the ocean energy, especially the measurement of turbulence flow velocity. So, it is particularly urgent to provide a high-sensitivity, low-cost and reliable fluid flow sensor for industry and consumer product application. This paper aims to design a micro fluid flow sensor with a cross beam membrane structure. The designed sensor can detect the fluid flow velocity and has a low kinetic energy dissipation rate.

In this paper, a micro fluid flow sensor with a cross beam membrane structure is designed to measure the ocean turbulence flow velocity. The design, simulation, fabrication and measurement of the designed sensor are discussed. By testing the simply packaged sensor in the fluid flow and analyzing the experiments data, the results show that the designed sensor has favorable performance.

The paper describes the tests of the designed sensor, and the experimental results show that the designed sensor can measure the fluid flow velocity and has a sensitivity of 11.12 mV/V/(m/s)2 and a low kinetic energy dissipation rate in the range of 10-6-10-4 W/kg.

This paper provides a micro-electro-mechanical systems fluid flow sensor used to measure ocean turbulence flow velocity.

The purpose of this paper is to use finite element method for optimizing the membrane type double cavity vacuum sealed structure for the best achievable sensitivity in a piezoresistive absolute pressure sensor and its validation using a standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process.

A double cavity vacuum sealed piezoresistive absolute pressure sensor has been simulated and optimized for its performance and an analytical model describing the behaviour of the sensor has been described. The 1×1 mm sensor chip has two membrane type 100×30×1.7 μm diaphragms consisting of composite layers of plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) of silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) and silicon dioxide (SiO₂) each hanging over 21 μm deep rectangular cavity. Potassium hydroxide (KOH) based anisotropic etching of single crystal silicon using front side lateral etching technology is used for the fabrication of the sensor. The electrical readout circuitry uses 318 Ω boron diffused low pressure vapour chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD) of polysilicon resistors arranged in the Wheatstone half bridge configuration. The sensing structure is simulated and optimized using COMSOL Multiphysics.

Front-side lateral etching technology has been successfully used for the fabrication of double cavity absolute pressure sensor. A good agreement with the fabricated device for the chosen location of the piezoresistors through simulation has been predicted. The measured pressure sensitivity of two tested pressure sensors is 12.63 and 12.46 mV/MPa, and simulated pressure sensitivity is found to be 12.9 mV/MPa for pressure range of 0 to 0.5 MPa. The location of the piezoresistor has also been optimized using the simulation tools for enhancing the sensor sensitivity to 62.14 mV/MPa. The pressure sensitivity is further enhanced to 92 mV/MPa by increasing the width of the diaphragm to 35 μm.

The simulated and measured pressure sensitivities of the double cavity pressure sensor are in close agreement. Sevenfold enhancement in the pressure sensitivity of the optimized sensing structure has been observed. The proposed front-side lateral etching technology can be adopted for making membrane type diaphragms hanging over vacuum sealed micro-cavities for high sensitivity pressure sensing applications.

This paper aims to design a new full‐body tactile sensor which is essential for the application of personal service robot similar to human skin.

The largest difficulty for designing a full‐body tactile sensor is the huge number of output connections. The sensor introduced in this paper is a special multi‐layer structure, which could minimize the output connections while sensing both the position and force information. Since it is made of conductive and non‐conductive textiles, the sensor could be used to cover the curved surface of robot body.

With better structure design, output connectors and signal measurement times could be dramatically reduced.

Sensor area and performance are limited by the sensitivity of the measurement circuits.

Introduces an innovate design of full‐body tactile sensor.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the disadvantages of traditional sensors and establish a new structure for pressure measurement.

A kind of novel piezoresistive micro‐pressure sensor with a cross‐beam membrane (CBM) structure is designed based on the silicon substrate. Through analyzing the stress distribution of the new structure by finite element method, the model of structure is established and compared with traditional structures. The fabrication is operated on silicon wafer, which applies the technology of anisotropy chemical etching and inductively coupled plasma.

Compared to the traditional C‐ and E‐type structures, this new CBM structure has the advantages of low nonlinearity and high sensitivities by the cross‐beam on the membrane, which cause the stress is more concentrated in sensitive area and the deflections that relate to the linearity are decreased.

The paper provides the first empirical reports on the new piezoresistive structure for the pressure measurement by fabricating a cross‐beam on the membrane and resolving the conflict of nonlinearity and sensitivity of the piezoresistive sensors.