Recent Advances of Capacitive Sensors: Materials, Microstructure Designs, Applications, and Opportunities

Capacitive sensors have advanced rapidly to create new applications including wearable sensors for human health monitoring, integrated sensors for intelligent surgical devices, tactile interfaces for robots. Compared to other types of pressure or strain sensors, capacitive sensors require low power consumption and offer excellent linearity and fast response time. Herein, this review concentrates on the recent advancements and developments of high-performance capacitive sensors with new materials and microstructures, which significantly enhance their sensitivity, accuracy, linearity, and response time. This work also provides a review of recent applications, from which current challenges and future opportunities are proposed and discussed.

Automated summary

Capacitive sensors have rapidly advanced and created new applications, such as wearable sensors for human health monitoring, integrated sensors for intelligent surgical devices, and tactile interfaces for robots. Compared to other types of sensors, capacitive sensors have advantages of low power consumption, excellent linearity, and fast response time. This review focuses on the recent advancements and developments of high-performance capacitive sensors with new materials and microstructures, which greatly enhance their sensitivity, accuracy, linearity, and response time. It also provides a review of recent applications and discusses current challenges and future opportunities.