Abstract
In the recent years, people care more about their facial expression with the life standard arising. They start to receive anaplasty (cosmetic surgery) in various ways. Orthodontia is one kind of cosmetic surgery that becomes a hot topic in the orthopedic surgery.In orthodontia, dentists usually put a metal pellet which scientific name is “Brace” to correct the teeth shape and their position. When the braces are glued over the teeth, nobody knows the interaction force between braces and the teeth. Improper assembly may cause severely damage to body. Our research is to develop a capacitive tactile sensor that could apply to the dentistry building up a scientific measuring method in orthodontia. Through this tactile sensing system, dentists can get much information during the operation and promote the medical treatment. They could also use the tactile sensor to tailor many kinds of treatment course suitable for different people.Neither relying on the change of electrodes overlapping area nor on electrodes distance, the capacitive tactile sensor was designed to vary the material dielectric constant within two metal plates. Based on the electrostriction effect, the capacitance within the electrodes would get variation. The detection can be implemented on a single side electrode (all at the bottom side). No moving parts in overall system that could be more robust and has tolerance to overloads. Large overload is usually critical issue for tactile sensing in biomedical applications.By using Micro - Electro - Mechanical technology (MEMS) and standard rubber modeling technique, we successfully fabricated the sensor. MEMS technology also provide us a way to fabricate many small sensor dies at one time that batch process could let the cost cut down and the size of sensor could be miniaturized too.