Market Assessment Application for Method of Fabricating Flexible Pressure Sensors

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A market study will be conducted to assess the viability of commercializing a new cost effective manufacturing method for fabricating flexible electronic pressure sensors. Flexible sensors are considered one of the current disruptive technologies that include flexible pressure sensors. The core inspiration comes from the fact that flexible pressure sensor can maintain its pressure sensitivity with any arbitrary bending thus providing conformal pressure measurement. Therefore, the technology is finding a wide range of emerging applications in market sectors such in automotive, human-machine interface, smart seat, soft robotics, consumer electronics and health monitoring. With the recent surge in demand for cost effective manufacturing of flexible pressure sensors, many new material design and device fabrication methods are being demonstrated by manipulating material composition, mechanical and electrical properties. Our technology benefits over current technologies on the fabrication of intrinsically flexible, stretchable and conformable pressure sensors based on electrical (capacitive) measurements. This new, provisionally patented technology is scaleable, cost effective to manufacture, and highly sensitive, especially at high pressure regimes. Manufacturing is not anticipated to require any specialized equipment or access to specialized microfabrication facilities. In contrast to previous methods to fabricate flexible and stretchable pressure sensors, this technology relies on simple, ultra low-cost molding to pattern siloxane-based materials (dielectric) thus considerably reducing manufacturing cost and time. This technology will find applications in multiple sectors including; monitoring of pressure in harsh environments, monitoring of pressure in tires, treads, seats and other automotive components, pressure sensing for robotics, touch panel pressure sensing for human machine interaction. At present, the pressure sensor market is a multi-billion dollar industry and is projected to continue growing. The applicants seek to pursue a market study to understand and identify the various sectors and the potential market opportunity for their technology in greater detail, and to validate the value proposition with industry key stakeholders.