Fabrication and Characterization of an Embroidered Force Sensing Resistor

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a textile-based Force Sensing Resistor (FSR). The sensor is composed of conductive threads with an interdigitated pattern, a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) spacer, and a carbon-based screen-printed layer on a Kapton substrate. Four sensors were fabricated, and each was subjected to five load cycles of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$0-150 ~\mathrm{N}$</tex> force. The resistance data of the sensors were acquired via chronoamperometry. A one-phase exponential decay curve was fitted to the average data with a high coefficient of determination, indicating good reliability of the model. The sensors exhibited sufficient sensitivity and intra-sensor repeatability. The results confirm the utilization of embroidery and screen printing as a reasonable approach for the production of customizable, integrable, and flexible e-textile sensors, even though standardization in manufacturing remains a major challenge to achieve reproducibility of performance from batch to batch.