DiaForce Dünnschichtsensoren zur Kraftmessung in extrem steifen adaptronischen Anwendungen

This paper deals with novel thin film sensors for measurement of load and temperature in adaptronic applications. The sensor consists of a thin layer of diamond-like-carbon and can be fabricated with high wear resistance and high hardness. Unlike well known strain gages and piezoresistive sensors, which detect a deformation of the base substrate, this novel sensor can be used in a complete stiff arrangement without any elastic joint. The sensor films can be fabricated directly on load relevant parts of an actuator and enable therefore self steering adaptronic systems. Amorphous diamond-like carbon films are well known for their excellent tribological properties. Novel nano structured amorphous carbon films showed an impressive piezorestive effect, which can be used for load measurement on tribological treated surfaces of different machine parts. The advantage over well known sensor techniques are: direct measurement in contact zones, high system stiffness and excellent adaptibility to different base materials due to low deposition temperatures. For film preparation modern plasma CVD and PVD processes were used. Since the substrate temperature was <120°C o broad variety of different base material can be coated with sensor film.