Francisco Javier Álvarez Ceballos, a Materials Engineering student at the University of Seville, has been awarded the Sociemat – Caja Ingenieros Prize for the Best Final Degree Project in Materials Engineering.
The winning project was co-directed by Prof. Agustín Rodríguez González-Elipe and Dr. Mª del Carmen López Santos from the Surface Nanotechnology group at the Materials Science Institute of Seville. Its title is: Thin layers for the development of electrical sensors for mechanical deformation.
The project has represented an important advance in the development of thin layers for obtaining electrical sensors stimulated by mechanical deformation. The aim was to obtain low-thickness materials for their integration into flexible micrometric systems that present changes in their electrical properties when subjected to applied mechanical stress.
The final result of the project has been the production of a laboratory-scale prototype of a piezoresistive sensor with an immediate response to a mechanical deformation on a micrometric scale, which, when an external force is applied to it, sends an electrical signal due to the change in resistivity of the thin layer.
The development of flexible mechanical deformation sensors is considered cutting-edge technology for the electronics industry today, both due to the lower costs of the materials used as probes and the simplicity of the response detection systems.
For these reasons, the use of these microcapacitive pressure sensors — composed of a flexible and at the same time dielectric material with deformable properties — could have very promising applications in the field of biomedicine; for example, to monitor the chest wall in patients on assisted breathing, or to determine the pressure required for a bandage.
The award ceremony will be held on March 14 at 12:30 p.m. in the Auditorium of cicCartuja, located at Avenida Américo Vespuccio, nº 49 in Seville, with the following agenda:
• Welcome by Prof. Alfonso Caballero Martínez
• Presentation by Prof. Paloma Fernández “A Year of Materials”
• Presentation of the Caja de Ingenieros Foundation and presentation of the Award by Mr. Miguel Sanjuán”
