How do force sensitive resistor (FSR) sensor work?

A force sen­si­tive resis­tor (FSR) is a mate­r­i­al which changes its resis­tance when a force or pres­sure is applied. Con­duc­tive film is an exam­ple of such force resis­tance material.

In oth­er words, force sen­si­tive resis­tor it’s a sen­sor that allow you to detect phys­i­cal pres­sure, squeez­ing and weight.

Usu­al­ly, force sen­si­tive resis­tors are very sim­ple to be made and low cost, although they are not accu­rate. For this rea­son, basi­cal­ly when you use FSR you should only expect to get ranges of response instead of pre­cise results. There­fore, while FSRs can detect weight, they can­not detect exact­ly how many pounds of weight are on them.

How­ev­er, even not being extreme­ly pre­cise, for most touch-sen­si­tive appli­ca­tions force sen­si­tive resis­tors are a good cost vs. ben­e­fit deal.

How force sensitive resistor can measure pressure/force

force-sensitive-resistors-caplinq-linqstat-conductive-film

FSR’s are usu­al­ly com­posed by two sub­strate lay­ers. Fol­lowed by the con­duc­tive film and the plas­tic spac­er, which includes an open­ing aligned with the active area. After the spac­er lay­er there’s the con­duc­tive print on substrate.

When exter­nal force is applied to the sen­sor, the con­duc­tive film is deformed against the sub­strate. Air from the spac­er open­ing is pushed through the air vent, and the con­duc­tive film comes into con­tact with the con­duc­tive print on the sub­strate. The more of the con­duc­tive ink area get in touch with the con­duc­tive film, the low­er the resistance.

There­fore, the more pres­sure applied on the sen­sor, the more the lay­ers touch the con­duc­tive film and that makes the resis­tance go down.

CAPLINQ presents LINQSTAT Con­duc­tive film for force sen­si­tive resistor

CAPLINQ LINQSTAT™ is a con­duc­tive poly­eth­yl­ene plas­tic film designed for appli­ca­tions like force sen­si­tive resis­tor. This prod­uct also offers medi­um-lev­el sta­t­ic pro­tec­tion, which means it effec­tive­ly avoids accu­mu­la­tion of elec­tric charge on itself and the prod­ucts which it protects.

Vis­it caplinq.com to learn more about CAPLINQ LINQSTAT Con­duc­tive film or about all our CAPLINQ con­duc­tive film mate­ri­als.

Con­tact us if you have fur­ther ques­tions on LINQSTAT for force sen­si­tive resistor.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

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