Novel Piezoelectric Sensor by Aerosol Jet Printing in Industry 4.0

In the latest years, Industry 4.0 paradigm is leading to a reduction of industrial process tolerances, an increase in machine lifetime and an improvement of the quality of the products. The fundamental concept of this fourth industrial revolution is the data coming from the whole production process. Information is usually extracted by algorithms that work on a large amount of data that are collected on the field by a huge set of sensors. New, customized and cheap sensors that are integrated into objects and processes are required. In this work, we propose a method that allows producing a novel class of piezoelectric force sensors through an additive and novel printing method: Aerosol Jet Printing. This technology allows fabricating electronic components and sensors on a wide set of substrates also directly on the surface of the objects. Therefore, smart objects for Industry 4.0 can be designed and manufactured. With the proposed approach it was possible to fabricate both axial and shear force sensors with a d33 up to 101 \mathrm{nC}\cdot \mathrm{N}^{-1} with a capacitance of 10.4 pF. The fabricated sensors are approximately 300\mu \mathrm{m} thick and can be shaped to fit different custom application requirements.