Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : December 22, 2018 - December 24, 2018
Cancer is one of the three major causes of death in Japan. The 90% of patients with cancer dies from metastasis. Therefore, it is essential to do the cancer treatment properly, in which the metastasis should be prevented or the place should be predicted where the cancer cells are going to spread to. However, the mechanical mechanism of metastasis is still under research. We attempt to develop a pressure sensor array that can continuously measure the force of nN order generated by the cancer cells in a distributed manner. The requirements that a pressure sensor array need to meet are as follows: the pressure sensor array must adhere to the surface of a cancer cell via many points, besides, it could measure the magnitude of the force (nN). The zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film, as the piezoelectric material, offers a desirable approach to fulfilling the need for measurement of the mechanical field generated by the cancer cells. In our research, we fabricated a set of plural sensors (Size: 100 μm×100 μm, Thickness: 1 μm) on a substrate by using the methods of sputtering and photolithography. In other words, we developed a multi-point pressure sensor array. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the sensitivity of the sensor, we used Au or Cr buffer layers, on which the ZnO thin film was formed, to find out the influence of the sensitivity of the sensor. Moreover, we measured the output voltage as a function of the load by using the sensor. In summary, the result of experiments shows that the sensitivity of the sensor is 5.31 mV/N.
