Micropillar Sensing Element for Bio-Inspired Flow Sensors

This paper describes the efforts toward the development of bio-inspired flow sensor. Anatomy study has indicated a basic transduction element is the hairy structure. This study describes the fabrication of sensing element that emulates the mechano-electrical transduction mechanism. Different transduction element designs were investigated. Especially, the hairy structure made of the SDW method not only produces transduction component for mechano-electrical coupling, it is also rugged, sensitive and fracture resistant. The hairy structure also features directional sensitivity which could be used for acoustic field direction determination. The hairy structure is being further refined and will ultimately be integrated into develop bio-inspired flow sensors.