The Future Development Trend Of Tension Sensors

Tension sensors play an increasingly important role in science and technology, industrial and agricultural production, and daily life. The increasing demands of human society on tension sensors are a powerful driving force for the development of tension sensor technology, and the rapid advancement of modern technology provides a strong backing. With the development of technology, tension sensors are constantly being updated.

1. Develop new tension sensors
The new type of tension sensor should generally include: adopting new principles, filling sensor blanks, and bionic sensors. They are interrelated. The working mechanism of the tension sensor is based on various effects and laws, which inspired people to further explore sensitive functional materials with new effects, and developed a new type of physical sensor device with new principles, which is to develop high performance and multifunction. , an important way to reduce costs and miniaturize sensors. Structured sensors have developed earlier and are now maturing. The structural sensor generally has a complicated structure, a large volume, and a high price. The physical sensor is roughly the opposite, with many attractive advantages, and the past development is not enough. All countries in the world have invested a lot of manpower and material resources in the research of physical sensors, making it a remarkable development trend. The low-sensitivity threshold sensor developed by quantum mechanical effect is used to detect weak signals and is one of the new development trends.

2, integrated, multi-functional, intelligent
Sensor integration includes two definitions. One is the parallelism of multiple components of the same function, that is, the single sensor elements of the same type are arranged on the same plane by the integration process, and the one-dimensional linear sensors are arranged, and the CCD image sensor belongs to This is the case. Another definition of integration is multi-functional integration, which integrates the sensor with amplification, calculation and temperature compensation to assemble a device.

With the development of integrated technology, various types of hybrid integrated and monolithic integrated pressure sensors have emerged, and some have become commodities. Integrated pressure sensors are piezoresistive, capacitive, and the like, among which piezoresistive integrated sensors are developing rapidly and widely used.

The multi-functionality of sensors is also one of its development directions. A typical example of so-called multi-functionality, a single-chip silicon multi-dimensional force sensor developed by a sensor research and development center of a university in the United States can simultaneously measure three linear velocities, three centrifugal accelerations, and three angular accelerations. The main components are a monolithic silicon structure consisting of four cantilever beams that are correctly designed to be mounted on a substrate, and nine piezoresistive sensing elements that are correctly placed on each cantilever beam. Multi-functionality can not only reduce production costs, reduce volume, but also effectively improve performance and reliability of sensors.

By integrating multiple sensing elements with different functions, in addition to measuring multiple parameters at the same time, the measurement results of these parameters can be comprehensively processed and evaluated, reflecting the overall state of the system under test. It can also be seen that integration brings many new opportunities to solid-state sensors, and it is also the basis for multi-functionality.

The combination of sensors and microprocessors not only has detection capabilities, but also artificial intelligence such as information processing, logic judgment, self-diagnosis, and "thinking", which is called sensor intelligence. By means of semiconductor integration technology, the sensor part is fabricated on the same chip as the signal pre-processing circuit, the input/output interface, the microprocessor, etc., which becomes a large-scale integrated smart sensor. It can be said that the smart sensor is the product of the combination of sensor technology and large-scale integrated circuit technology, and its implementation will depend on the improvement and development of the sensing technology and semiconductor integration process. This kind of sensor has many advantages such as multi-performance, high performance, small size, suitable for mass production and convenient use. It can be said that it is one of the important directions of the sensor.


3. New material development
Sensor materials are an important foundation for sensor technology and an important support for sensor technology upgrades.

With the advancement of materials science, sensor technology has become more and more mature, and its types are increasing. In addition to the early use of semiconductor materials and ceramic materials, the development of optical fibers and superconducting materials provides a material basis for the development of sensors. For example, many semiconductor materials based on silicon are easy to miniaturize, integrate, multi-functional, and intelligent, and semiconductor photothermal detectors have high sensitivity, high precision, non-contact, etc., and develop infrared sensors and laser sensors. Modern sensors such as fiber optic sensors; among sensitive materials, ceramic materials and organic materials are developing rapidly. Different formulations can be used to mix raw materials. On the basis of precise chemical composition, high-precision molding and sintering can be used to obtain a certain type or Sensitive materials with certain gas identification functions are used to make new gas sensors. In addition, high-molecular organic sensitive materials are new sensitive materials with great application potential in recent years, and can be made into sensors such as heat sensitive, photosensitive, gas sensitive, moisture sensitive, force sensitive, ion sensitive and biosensitive. The continuous development of tension sensor technology has also promoted the development of newer materials such as nanomaterials. NRC Corporation of the United States has developed a nano ZrO2 gas sensor to control the emission of exhaust gas from motor vehicles, which has a good effect on purifying the environment and has a broad application prospect. Because of the sensor made of nano material, it has a huge interface, can provide a large number of gas channels, and the on-resistance is small, which is beneficial to the development of the sensor to miniaturization. With the continuous advancement of science and technology, more new materials will be born. .

4. Adoption of new technology
In the development of new tension sensors, the adoption of new processes is inseparable. The meaning of the new process is very broad, and here mainly refers to the micro-machining technology that is particularly closely related to the development of emerging sensors. This technology, also known as micromachining technology, has been developed in recent years along with integrated circuit technology. It is a technology for microelectronic processing such as ion beam, electron beam, molecular beam, laser beam and chemical etching. The more used in the field of sensors, such as sputtering, evaporation, plasma etching, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), epitaxy, diffusion, etching, photolithography, etc., there have been a large number of sensors made by the above processes. Domestic and foreign reports.

5, smart materials
Intelligent materials refer to the physical, chemical, mechanical, electrical and other parameters of designing and controlling materials, and the development of materials with properties of raw materials or artificial materials superior to the properties of biological materials. Some people think that a material with the following functions can be called a smart material: it has an adaptive function for judging the environment; it has a self-diagnosis function; it has a self-repair function; and has a self-enhancement function (or a time base function).

The most prominent feature of biological materials is their time-based function, so this sensor characteristic is differential and it is sensitive to variational parts. Conversely, if you are in a certain environment for a long time and are used to it, the sensitivity will decrease. In general, it can adapt to the environment to adjust its sensitivity. In addition to biological materials, the most striking smart materials are shape memory alloys, shape memory ceramics and shape memory polymers. The exploration of smart materials has just begun, and I believe that there will be great development in the near future.