Capacitive Fringing Field Moisture Sensors Implemented in Flexible Printed Circuit Board Technology

Capacitive fringing field sensors are often used in applications where moisture is detected, since the dielectric constant of liquid water is approximately 80 times greater than the dielectric constant of air. Most of these sensors, however, are realized using rigid substrates. Some applications would benefit from using a flexible capacitive fringing field sensor that could be conformally mounted on a nonplanar surface. Flexible printed circuit board technology is a mature commercially available process for manufacturing flexible electronics. This same technology can also be used to realize flexible fringing field moisture sensors where the patterned Cu foil is used for the electrodes and the soldermask coating electrically insulates the electrodes from being electrically shorted by moisture in the detection environment. Sensors were designed and characterized through flat and bending tests in air and in water. The tests demonstrated that bending a sensor over a radius of curvature as small as 13.7 mm had no measurable impact on sensor performance in air or in water. The sensors achieved a 3:1 increase in capacitance when immersed in water compared with in air.