Search Results (22)

The intrinsic noise of giant magnetoresistive (GMR) sensors is large at low frequencies, and their resolution is inevitably significantly limited. Investigation of GMR noise requires the use of measurement systems that have lower noise than the sample. In this context, the main purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of two electronic noise measurement configurations of a single GMR sensing element. The first method connects the sample in a voltage divider configuration and the second method connects in a Wheatstone bridge configuration. Three amplification set-ups were investigated: a low-noise amplifier, an ultra-low-noise amplifier and an instrumentation amplifier. Using cross-correlation, the noise of the measurement system introduced by the amplifiers was reduced. Noise spectra were recorded at room temperature in the frequency range of 0.5 Hz to 10 kHz, under different sample bias voltages. The measurements were performed in zero applied magnetic field and in a field corresponding to the maximum sensitivity of the sensor. From the noise spectra, the detectivity of the sensor was determined to be in the 200–300 nT/√Hz range. Good agreement was observed between the results obtained using all three set-ups, suggesting the effectiveness of the noise measurement systems applied to the magnetoresistive sensor. Full article

Accurate measurement of magnetic fields holds immense significance across various disciplines, such as IC circuit measurement, geological exploration, and aerospace. The sensitivity and noise parameters of magnetic field sensors play a vital role in detecting minute fluctuations in magnetic fields. However, the current detection capability of tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) is insufficient to meet the requirements for weak magnetic field measurement. This study investigates the impact of structural and fabrication parameters on the performance of TMR sensors. We fabricated series-connected TMR sensors with varying long-axis lengths of the elliptical cross-section and adjusted their performance by modifying annealing magnetic fields and magnetic field bias along the easy axis. The results demonstrate that TMR sensitivity decreases with increasing long-axis length, increases initially and then decreases with an annealing magnetic field, and decreases with a higher bias magnetic field along the easy axis. The voltage noise level of TMR sensors decreases as the long-axis length increases. Notably, the detection capability of TMR sensors exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on long-axis length. Moreover, we optimized the hysteresis of TMR sensors by applying a magnetic field bias along the easy axis. When the bias along the easy axis reached 16 Oe or −40 Oe, the hysteresis level was reduced to below 0.5 Oe. After encapsulating the TMR devices into a full Wheatstone bridge structure, we achieved a detection capability of 17 nT/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$@1Hz. This study highlights that the detection capability of TMR devices is jointly influenced by fabrication parameters. By optimizing parameter configuration, this work provides theoretical guidance for further enhancing the performance of TMR devices in magnetic field measurements. Full article

The main objective of the work is to investigate the capacity of a single magnetoresistance (MR) element to measure AC electrical currents. An instrumentation system is presented to characterize individually the four active elements of an MR bridge current sensor preserving their internal connections. The system suggests the possibility to sense electrical currents using only one element of the bridge opening the way to design new MR sensors based on this concept. Sensitivity, offset and non-linearity deviation were obtained using bridges of tunnel (TMR)- and giant (GMR)-based MR technologies. The single element embedded in a Wheatstone bridge configuration is used for practical current measurements in a 50 Hz line. An electronic circuitry is proposed to measure alternating (AC) currents with a single MR element, including a lock-in amplifier and an interface to properly convert the signal to its root mean square (rms) value with a resolution of 250 mA peak in the 125 A range. Full article

This paper describes the design, fabrication, integration, characterization, and demonstration of a novel flexible double-sided curvature sensor array for use in soft robotics. The paper explores the performance and potential applications of a piezoresistive sensor array consisting of four gold strain gauges on a flexible polyimide (PI) substrate arranged in a Wheatstone bridge configuration. Multiple sensor strips were arranged like the fingers of a hand. Integrating Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) foils alongside the fingers was explored to mimic a human hand-gripping motion controlled with temperature, while curvature sensor array strips measure the resulting finger shapes. Moreover, object sensing in a flexible granular material gripper was demonstrated. The sensors were embedded within Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to enhance their tactile feel and adhesive properties. The findings of this study are promising for future applications, particularly in robotics and prosthetics, as the ability to accurately mimic human hand movements and reconstruct sensor surfaces paves the way for robotic hand functionality. Full article

This investigation into the aerodynamic efficiency and structural integrity of tubercle leading edges, inspired by the agile maneuverability of humpback whales, employs a multifaceted experimental and computational approach. By utilizing static load extensometer testing complemented by computational simulations, this study quantitatively assesses the impacts of unique wing geometries on aerodynamic forces and structural behavior. The experimental setup, involving a Wheatstone full-bridge circuit, measures the strain responses of tubercle-configured leading edges under static loads. These measured strains are converted into stress values through Hooke’s law, revealing a consistent linear relationship between the applied loads and induced strains, thereby validating the structural robustness. The experimental results indicate a linear strain increase with load application, demonstrating strain values ranging from 65 με under a load of 584 g to 249 με under a load of 2122 g. These findings confirm the structural integrity of the designs across varying load conditions. Discrepancies noted between the experimental data and simulation outputs, however, underscore the effects of 3D printing imperfections on the structural analysis. Despite these manufacturing challenges, the results endorse the tubercle leading edges’ capacity to enhance aerodynamic performance and structural resilience. This study enriches the understanding of bio-inspired aerodynamic designs and supports their potential in practical fluid mechanics applications, suggesting directions for future research on manufacturing optimizations. Full article

Electrothermal piezoresistive resonant cantilever sensors have been fabricated with embedded actuating (heating resistor) and sensing (piezo resistors) parts, with the latter configured in a Wheatstone bridge circuit. Due to the close spacing between these two elements, a direct thermal parasitic effect on the resonant sensor during the actuating-sensing process leads to asymmetric amplitude and reversing phase spectral responses. Such a condition affects the precise determination of the cantilever’s resonant frequency, f₀. Moreover, in the context of phase-locked loop-based (PLL) resonance tracking, a reversing phase spectral response hinders the resonance locking due to its ambiguity. In this work, a replica of the baseline spectral was applied to remove the thermal parasitic effect on the resonance spectra of the cantilever sensor, and its capability was simulated through mathematical analysis. This replica spectral was subtracted from the parasitized spectral using a particular calculation, resulting in optimized spectral responses. An assessment using cigarette smoke particles performed a desired spectral shifting into symmetrical amplitude shapes and monotonic phase transitions, subsequently allowing for real-time PLL-based frequency tracking. Full article

In this work, we demonstrate the preparation of easy-to-fabricate nanogranular strontium ferromolybdate/strontium molybdate core-shell ceramics and examine their properties, including tunnel magnetoresistance, magnetic field sensitivity, and temperature coefficient of the tunnel magnetoresistance. The tunnel magnetoresistance of nanogranular strontium ferromolybdate/strontium molybdate core-shell ceramics was modeled, yielding values suitable for magnetoresistive sensor applications. Such structures possess a narrow peak of magnetic flux sensibility located at about 80 mT. For magnetic flux measurement, single-domain granules with superparamagnetic behavior should be applied. The predicted TMR magnetic flux sensitivities for granules with superparamagnetic behavior amount to about 7.7% T⁻¹ and 1.5% T⁻¹ for granule sizes of 3 nm and 5 nm, respectively. A drawback of the tunnel magnetoresistance of such nanogranular core-shell ceramics is the unacceptably large value of the temperature coefficient. Acceptable values, lower than 2% K⁻¹, are obtained only at low temperatures (less than 100 K) or large magnetic flux densities (exceeding 6 T). Therefore, a Wheatstone bridge configuration should be adopted for magnetoresistive sensor design to compensate for the effect of temperature. Full article

In this paper, we propose a novel tactile sensor with a “fingerprint” design, named due to its spiral shape and dimensions of 3.80 mm × 3.80 mm. The sensor is duplicated in a four-by-four array containing 16 tactile sensors to form a “SkinCell” pad of approximately 45 mm by 29 mm. The SkinCell was fabricated using a custom-built microfabrication platform called the NeXus which contains additive deposition tools and several robotic systems. We used the NeXus’ six-degrees-of-freedom robotic platform with two different inkjet printers to deposit a conductive silver ink sensor electrode as well as the organic piezoresistive polymer PEDOT:PSS-Poly (3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene)-poly(styrene sulfonate) of our tactile sensor. Printing deposition profiles of 100-micron- and 250-micron-thick layers were measured using microscopy. The resulting structure was sintered in an oven and laminated. The lamination consisted of two different sensor sheets placed back-to-back to create a half-Wheatstone-bridge configuration, doubling the sensitivity and accomplishing temperature compensation. The resulting sensor array was then sandwiched between two layers of silicone elastomer that had protrusions and inner cavities to concentrate stresses and strains and increase the detection resolution. Furthermore, the tactile sensor was characterized under static and dynamic force loading. Over 180,000 cycles of indentation were conducted to establish its durability and repeatability. The results demonstrate that the SkinCell has an average spatial resolution of 0.827 mm, an average sensitivity of 0.328 $\mathsf{m}\mathsf{\Omega }/\mathsf{\Omega }/\mathsf{N}$, expressed as the change in resistance per force in Newtons, an average sensitivity of 1.795 µV/N at a loading pressure of 2.365 PSI, and a dynamic response time constant of 63 ms which make it suitable for both large area skins and fingertip human–robot interaction applications. Full article

A 2D calorimetric flow transducer is used to study distortions of the flow velocity field induced by small surface discontinuities around the chip. The transducer is incorporated into a matching recess of a PCB enabling wire-bonded interconnections to the transducer. The chip mount forms one wall of a rectangular duct. Two shallow recesses at opposite edges of the transducer chip are required for wired interconnections. They distort the flow velocity field inside the duct and deteriorate the flow setting precision. In-depth 3D-FEM analyses of the setup revealed that both the local flow direction as well as the surface-near distribution of the flow velocity magnitude deviate significantly from the ideal guided flow case. With a temporary leveling of the indentations, the impact of the surface imperfections could be largely suppressed. Including a yaw setting uncertainty of about ±0.5°, a peak-to-peak deviation of 3.8° of the transducer output from the intended flow direction was achieved with a mean flow velocity of 5 m/s in the duct corresponding to a shear rate of 2.4·104 s⁻¹ at the chip surface. In view of the practical compromises, the measured deviation compares well with the peak-to-peak value of 1.74° predicted by previous simulations. Full article

High precision temperature measurements are a transversal need in a wide area of physical experiments. Space-borne gravitational wave detectors are a particularly challenging case, requiring both high precision and high stability in temperature measurement. In this contribution, we present a design able to reach 1 $\mathsf{\mu }\mathrm{K}/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ in most of the measuring band down to 1 mHz, and reaching 20 $\mathsf{\mu }\mathrm{K}/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ at 0.1 mHz. The scheme is based on resistive sensors in a Wheatstone bridge configuration which is AC modulated to minimize the 1/f noise. As a part of our study, we include the design of a test bench able to guarantee the high stability environment required for measurements. We show experimental results characterising both the test bench and the read-out, and discuss potential noise sources that may limit our measurement. Full article

Self-calibration capabilities for flexible pressure sensors are greatly needed for fluid dynamic analysis, structure health monitoring and wearable sensing applications to compensate, in situ and in real time, for sensor drifts, nonlinearity effects, and hysteresis. Currently, very few self-calibrating pressure sensors can be found in the literature, let alone in flexible formats. This paper presents a flexible self-calibrating pressure sensor fabricated from a silicon-on-insulator wafer and bonded on a polyimide substrate. The sensor chip is made of four piezoresistors arranged in a Wheatstone bridge configuration on a pressure-sensitive membrane, integrated with a gold thin film-based reference cavity heater, and two thermistors. With a liquid-to-vapor thermopneumatic actuation system, the sensor can create precise in-cavity pressure for self-calibration. Compared with the previous work related to the single-phase air-only counterpart, testing of this two-phase sensor demonstrated that adding the water liquid-to-vapor phase change can improve the effective range of self-calibration from 3 psi to 9.5 psi without increasing the power consumption of the cavity micro-heater. The calibration time can be further improved to a few seconds with a pulsed heating power. Full article

The load cell is an indispensable component of many engineering machinery and industrial automation for measuring and sensing force and torque. This paper describes the design and analysis of the strain gauge load cell, from the conceptional design stage to shape optimization (based on the finite element method (FEM) technique) and calibration, providing ample load capacity with low-cost material (aluminum 6061) and highly accurate force measurement. The amplifier circuit of the half Wheatstone bridge configuration with two strain gauges was implemented experimentally with an actual load cell prototype. The calibration test was conducted to evaluate the load cell characteristics and derive the governing equation for sensing the unknown load depending on the measured output voltage. The measured sensitivity of the load cell is approximately 15 mV/N and 446.8 µV/V at a maximum applied load of 30 kg. The findings are supported by FEM results and experiments with an acceptable percentage of errors, which revealed an overall error of 6% in the worst situation. Therefore, the proposed load cell meets the design considerations for axial force measurement for the laboratory test bench, which has a light weight of 20 g and a maximum axial force capacity of 300 N with good sensor characteristics. Full article

This study reviews second-generation voltage conveyor (VCII)-based read-out circuits for sensors and bioelectrical signal conditioning from existing literature. VCII is the dual circuit of a second-generation current conveyor (CCII), which provides the possibility of processing signals in the current domain while providing output signals in the voltage form. The scope of this paper is to discuss the benefits and opportunities of new VCII-based read-out circuits over traditional ones and bioelectrical signals. The achieved main benefits compared to conventional circuits are the simpler read-out circuits, producing an output signal in a voltage form that can be directly used, improved accuracy, possibility of gain adjustment using a single grounded resistor, and the possibility of connecting several SiPM sensors to the readout circuit. The circuits studied in this paper include VCII- based read-out circuits suitable for all types of sensors configured in the current-mode Wheatstone bridge (CMWB) topology, the VCII-based read-out circuits solutions reported for silicon photomultiplier, spiral-shaped ultrasonic PVDF and differential capacitive sensors, and, finally, a simple readout circuitry for sensing bioelectrical signals. There are still not many VCII-based readout circuits, and we hope that the outcome of this study will enhance this area of research and inspire new ideas. Full article

In this paper, a polyimide (PI)/Si/SiO₂-based piezoresistive microcantilever biosensor was developed to achieve a trace level detection for aflatoxin B1. To take advantage of both the high piezoresistance coefficient of single-crystal silicon and the small spring constant of PI, the flexible piezoresistive microcantilever was designed using the buried oxide (BOX) layer of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer as a bottom passivation layer, the topmost single-crystal silicon layer as a piezoresistor layer, and a thin PI film as a top passivation layer. To obtain higher sensitivity and output voltage stability, four identical piezoresistors, two of which were located in the substrate and two integrated in the microcantilevers, were composed of a quarter-bridge configuration wheatstone bridge. The fabricated PI/Si/SiO₂ microcantilever showed good mechanical properties with a spring constant of 21.31 nN/μm and a deflection sensitivity of 3.54 × 10⁻⁷ nm⁻¹. The microcantilever biosensor also showed a stable voltage output in the Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS) buffer with a fluctuation less than 1 μV @ 3 V. By functionalizing anti-aflatoxin B1 on the sensing piezoresistive microcantilever with a biotin avidin system (BAS), a linear aflatoxin B1 detection concentration resulting from 1 ng/mL to 100 ng/mL was obtained, and the toxic molecule detection also showed good specificity. The experimental results indicate that the PI/Si/SiO₂ flexible piezoresistive microcantilever biosensor has excellent abilities in trace-level and specific detections of aflatoxin B1 and other biomolecules. Full article

Thanks to high sensitivity, excellent scalability, and low power consumption, magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ)-based tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors have been widely implemented in various industrial fields. In nondestructive magnetic flux leakage testing, the magnetic sensor plays a significant role in the detection results. As highly sensitive sensors, integrated MTJs can suppress frequency-dependent noise and thereby decrease detectivity; therefore, serial MTJ-based sensors allow for the design of high-performance sensors to measure variations in magnetic fields. In the present work, we fabricated serial MTJ-based TMR sensors and connected them to a full Wheatstone bridge circuit. Because noise power can be suppressed by using bridge configuration, the TMR sensor with Wheatstone bridge configuration showed low noise spectral density (0.19 μV/Hz^0.5) and excellent detectivity (5.29 × 10⁻⁸ Oe/Hz^0.5) at a frequency of 1 Hz. Furthermore, in magnetic flux leakage testing, compared with one TMR sensor, the Wheatstone bridge TMR sensors provided a higher signal-to-noise ratio for inspection of a steel bar. The one TMR sensor system could provide a high defect signal due to its high sensitivity at low lift-off (4 cm). However, as a result of its excellent detectivity, the full Wheatstone bridge-based TMR sensor detected the defect even at high lift-off (20 cm). This suggests that the developed TMR sensor provides excellent detectivity, detecting weak field changes in magnetic flux leakage testing. Full article