Dispenser printed capacitive proximity sensor on fabric for applications in the creative industries

This paper reports a planar capacitive proximity sensor fully dispenser printed on a standard polyester woven fabric using conductive ink. Dispenser printing is a new digital printing technique offering the advantages of complete geometric design flexibility and the ability to direct write multilayer devices without requiring bespoke tooling. A dispenser printer is also capable of printing a wide range of ink viscosities encompassing those of inkjet and screen printable inks. Previous research has demonstrated the principle of using proximity sensors for human interaction but none of them are fabricated directly on fabric. In this research, the proximity sensor is dispenser printed directly onto the fabric with an optimised loop electrode design which uses 76% less conductive ink while still offering 90% of the detection range when compared with a standard filled electrode design. The loop design also has the highest detection coefficient (maximum detection distance versus the conductive area of the sensor) of 0.23 compared with 0.06 and 0.1 for the investigated filled and spiral designs, respectively. In addition, the ratio of the track width to the width of the entire sensor is investigated showing 1/16 as being the most suitable ratio for the proximity sensor printed on fabric. Proximity sensors with loop widths ranging from 10 mm to 400 mm are evaluated. The maximum detection distance is 400 mm when the largest sensor is used and the linearity of the sensing circuit is 0.79.