Micro/Nanosystems for Capacitive Sensors

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "E:Engineering and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 July 2021) | Viewed by 10885

Special Issue Editor

Department of Microelectronics, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: capacitive touch controller and styli; fingerprint sensor and its controller; ultrasound imaging system

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Micro/nanosystems for capacitive sensors have been widely used in many applications such as a proximity/gesture sensing, material analysis, and liquid level sensing. The main advantages of capacitive sensor systems are that they can sense various types of materials (skin, plastic, metal, and liquid) with a large distance, high sensitivity, high speed, low cost, and low power. To realize micro/nanosystems, system level research on, for example, capacitive sensors, controllers, and digital algorithms is continuously required. Capacitive sensors are required to have high sensitivity, high linearity, a small size, and low manufacturing characteristics. The controller needs a high signal-to-noise ratio, high frame rate, and low power consumption. The digital algorithm needs highly efficient data calculation methods. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles that focus on novel micro/nanosystems using capacitive sensors for various applications.

Dr. Jae-Sung An
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • micro/nanosystem
  • capacitive sensor
  • controller
  • algorithm

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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13 pages, 4791 KiB  
Article
A Mutual Capacitance Touch Readout IC with Synchronization in Touch and Mobile Display Driving for High Refresh Rate AMOLED Panels
by Seunghoon Ko
Micromachines 2021, 12(8), 922; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12080922 - 31 Jul 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2669
Abstract
This paper presents a mutual capacitance touch readout IC architecture for 120 Hz high-refresh-rate AMOLED displays. In high-refresh-rate AMOLED panels, whole pixels in a horizontal line should be updated without any time-sharing with each other, leading to an amplified display noise on touch [...] Read more.
This paper presents a mutual capacitance touch readout IC architecture for 120 Hz high-refresh-rate AMOLED displays. In high-refresh-rate AMOLED panels, whole pixels in a horizontal line should be updated without any time-sharing with each other, leading to an amplified display noise on touch screen panel (TSP) electrodes. The proposed system architecture mitigates severe display noise by synchronizing the driving for the TSP and AMOLED pixel circuits. The proposed differential sensing technique, which is based on noise suppression in reference to mutual capacitance channels, minimizes common-mode display noise. In the front-end circuit, intrinsic circuit offset is cancelled by a chopping scheme, which correlates to the phase of the driving signals in the TSP driver and operating clocks of the front-end. Operating at a 120 Hz scan-rate, it reduces display noise by more than 11.6 dB when compared with the conventional single-ended TSP sensing method. With a built-in 130-nm CMOS, a prototype IC occupies an area of 8.02 mm2 while consuming 6.4-mW power from a 3.3 V analog voltage supply. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Micro/Nanosystems for Capacitive Sensors)
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Review

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31 pages, 7667 KiB  
Review
Readout Circuits for Capacitive Sensors
by Yongsang Yoo and Byong-Deok Choi
Micromachines 2021, 12(8), 960; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12080960 - 13 Aug 2021
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 7583
Abstract
The development of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) processes enables the integration of capacitive sensors into silicon integrated circuits. These sensors have been gaining considerable attention as a solution for mobile and internet of things (IoT) devices because of their low power consumption. In this [...] Read more.
The development of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) processes enables the integration of capacitive sensors into silicon integrated circuits. These sensors have been gaining considerable attention as a solution for mobile and internet of things (IoT) devices because of their low power consumption. In this study, we introduce the operating principle of representative capacitive sensors and discuss the major technical challenges, solutions, and future tasks for a capacitive readout system. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is the most important performance parameter for a sensor system that measures changes in physical quantities; in addition, power consumption is another important factor because of the characteristics of mobile and IoT devices. Signal power degradation and noise, which degrade the SNR in the sensor readout system, are analyzed; circuit design approaches for degradation prevention are discussed. Further, we discuss the previous efforts and existing studies that focus on low power consumption. We present detailed circuit techniques and illustrate their effectiveness in suppressing signal power degradation and achieving lower noise levels via application to a design example of an actual MEMS microphone readout system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Micro/Nanosystems for Capacitive Sensors)
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