Integration of Printed PVDF-Based Force Sensors into a Printed Circuit Board Stack

This work reports on the fabrication and testing of force sensors integrated directly into a printed circuit board (PCB). For this purpose, a layer of poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylen) (P(VDF-TrFE)) is printed onto two pieces of two two-layer PCBs, which are then stacked together to create a four-layer PCB. The devised and fabricated sensor with the described measurement setup features a nearly linear measurement characteristic in the range between 0.3 and 1.2 N and a detection limit of approximately 10 mN.