Reverter Ferran
Department of Electronic Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Castelldefels, 08860 Barcelona, Spain.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 Jun 6;24(11):3690. doi: 10.3390/s24113690.
An outstanding event related to the understanding of the physics of mechanical sensors occurred and was announced in 1954, exactly seventy years ago. This event was the discovery of the piezoresistive effect, which led to the development of semiconductor strain gauges with a sensitivity much higher than that obtained before in conventional metallic strain gauges. In turn, this motivated the subsequent development of the earliest micromachined silicon devices and the corresponding MEMS devices. The science and technology related to sensors has experienced noteworthy advances in the last decades, but the piezoresistive effect is still the main physical phenomenon behind many mechanical sensors, both commercial and in research models. On this 70th anniversary, this tutorial aims to explain the operating principle, subtypes, input-output characteristics, and limitations of the three main types of mechanical sensor: strain gauges, capacitive sensors, and piezoelectric sensors. These three sensor technologies are also compared with each other, highlighting the main advantages and disadvantages of each one.
70年前，也就是1954年，发生了一件与理解机械传感器物理原理相关的重大事件并被公布。这一事件就是压阻效应的发现，它促使了半导体应变片的发展，其灵敏度远高于此前传统金属应变片所能达到的灵敏度。反过来，这又推动了最早的微机械硅器件及相应微机电系统（MEMS）器件的后续发展。在过去几十年里，与传感器相关的科学技术取得了显著进展，但压阻效应仍是许多商用和研究型机械传感器背后的主要物理现象。在这个70周年之际，本教程旨在解释三种主要类型机械传感器（应变片、电容式传感器和压电传感器）的工作原理、子类型、输入输出特性及局限性。还将对这三种传感器技术进行相互比较，突出每种技术的主要优缺点。
