scholarly journals Soft eSkin: distributed touch sensing with harmonized energy and computing

Author(s):  
Mahesh Soni ◽  
Ravinder Dahiya

Inspired by biology, significant advances have been made in the field of electronic skin (eSkin) or tactile skin. Many of these advances have come through mimicking the morphology of human skin and by distributing few touch sensors in an area. However, the complexity of human skin goes beyond mimicking few morphological features or using few sensors. For example, embedded computing (e.g. processing of tactile data at the point of contact) is centric to the human skin as some neuroscience studies show. Likewise, distributed cell or molecular energy is a key feature of human skin. The eSkin with such features, along with distributed and embedded sensors/electronics on soft substrates, is an interesting topic to explore. These features also make eSkin significantly different from conventional computing. For example, unlike conventional centralized computing enabled by miniaturized chips, the eSkin could be seen as a flexible and wearable large area computer with distributed sensors and harmonized energy. This paper discusses these advanced features in eSkin, particularly the distributed sensing harmoniously integrated with energy harvesters, storage devices and distributed computing to read and locally process the tactile sensory data. Rapid advances in neuromorphic hardware, flexible energy generation, energy-conscious electronics, flexible and printed electronics are also discussed. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Harmonizing energy-autonomous computing and intelligence’.

Author(s):  
Mahesh Soni ◽  
Dhayalan Shakthivel ◽  
Adamos Christou ◽  
Ayoub Zumeit ◽  
Nivasan Yogeswaran ◽  
...  

MRS Bulletin ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 471-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Chason ◽  
Daniel R. Gamota ◽  
Paul W. Brazis ◽  
Krishna Kalyanasundaram ◽  
Jie Zhang ◽  
...  

AbstractDevelopments originally targeted toward economical manufacturing of telecommunications products have planted the seeds for new opportunities such as low-cost, large-area electronics based on printing technologies. Organic-based materials systems for printed wiring board (PWB) construction have opened up unique opportunities for materials research in the fabrication of modular electronic systems.The realization of successful consumer products has been driven by materials developments that expand PWB functionality through embedded passive components, novel MEMS structures (e.g., meso-MEMS, in which the PWB-based structures are at the milliscale instead of the microscale), and microfluidics within the PWB. Furthermore, materials research is opening up a new world of printed electronics technology, where active devices are being realized through the convergence of printing technologies and microelectronics.


2013 ◽  
Vol 844 ◽  
pp. 158-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.I. Maksud ◽  
Mohd Sallehuddin Yusof ◽  
M. Mahadi Abdul Jamil

Recently low cost production is vital to produce printed electronics by roll to roll manufacturing printing process like a flexographic. Flexographic has a high speed technique which commonly used for printing onto large area flexible substrates. However, the minimum feature sizes achieved with roll to roll printing processes, such as flexographic is in the range of fifty microns. The main contribution of this limitation is photopolymer flexographic plate unable to be produced finer micron range due to film that made by Laser Ablation Mask (LAMs) technology not sufficiently robust and consequently at micron ranges line will not be formed on the printing plate. Hence, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is used instead of photopolymer. Printing trial had been conducted and multiple solid lines successfully printed for below fifty microns line width with no interference between two adjacent lines of the printed images.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (18) ◽  
pp. 5394-5400 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Lima ◽  
N. Pereira ◽  
R. Policia ◽  
C. Ribeiro ◽  
V. Correia ◽  
...  

For the first time is reported the development of a screen printed flexible magnetoelectric material based on P(VDF–TrFE), PVDF and CoFe2O4. The ME voltage coefficient of 164 mV cm−1 Oe−1 at a longitudinal resonance frequency of 16.2 kHz, the highest reported in the literature, certifies the use of the printed material on printed electronics, sensors, actuators, and energy harvesters.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalyan Yoti Mitra ◽  
Sunil Kapadia ◽  
Melinda Hartwig ◽  
Enrico Sowade ◽  
Zhenxing Xu ◽  
...  

Coatings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 885
Author(s):  
HyungTae Kim ◽  
Yoon Jae Moon ◽  
Heuiseok Kang ◽  
Jun Yong Hwang

In printed electronics, laser ablation is used to repair defective patterns on transparent, flexible, and thin films, using high-power lasers. The distance between the film surface and laser focus is sensitive to changes as the narrow focus depth of the lens is the range of tens of microns. However, a film fixed on a conductive vacuum chuck (CVC) is always curved, owing to chucking bending; thus, laser focusing must be locally performed before ablation. Therefore, this study proposes a non-contact measurement method for the surface flatness of a transparent and thin film, to compensate for laser defocusing in a large area. The surface flatness was obtained using camera-focus points on the porous surface of the CVC. The focus points were interpolated to achieve a smooth and continuous surface flatness for chucking bending. A laser distance sensor was used to verify the surface flatness from the proposed method. The surface flatness was used to inspect the printed patterns, and to perform laser ablation on the film. The proposed method is advantageous for large-area laser ablation and is expected to become indispensable for repairing machines in printed electronics.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. e1501624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fang Yi ◽  
Xiaofeng Wang ◽  
Simiao Niu ◽  
Shengming Li ◽  
Yajiang Yin ◽  
...  

The rapid growth of deformable and stretchable electronics calls for a deformable and stretchable power source. We report a scalable approach for energy harvesters and self-powered sensors that can be highly deformable and stretchable. With conductive liquid contained in a polymer cover, a shape-adaptive triboelectric nanogenerator (saTENG) unit can effectively harvest energy in various working modes. The saTENG can maintain its performance under a strain of as large as 300%. The saTENG is so flexible that it can be conformed to any three-dimensional and curvilinear surface. We demonstrate applications of the saTENG as a wearable power source and self-powered sensor to monitor biomechanical motion. A bracelet-like saTENG worn on the wrist can light up more than 80 light-emitting diodes. Owing to the highly scalable manufacturing process, the saTENG can be easily applied for large-area energy harvesting. In addition, the saTENG can be extended to extract energy from mechanical motion using flowing water as the electrode. This approach provides a new prospect for deformable and stretchable power sources, as well as self-powered sensors, and has potential applications in various areas such as robotics, biomechanics, physiology, kinesiology, and entertainment.


Author(s):  
Yi Zheng ◽  
Zhi-Zhu He ◽  
Jun Yang ◽  
Jing Liu

The advancement of printed electronics technology has significantly facilitated the development of electronic engineering. However, so far there still remain big barriers to impede the currently available printing technologies from being extensively used. Many of the difficulties came from the factors like: complicated ink-configurations, high post-treatment temperature, poor conductivity in room temperature and extremely high cost and time consuming fabrication process. From an alternative strategy, our recently invented desktop liquid metal printer offered a flexible way to better address the above deficiencies. Through modifying the system developed in the authors’ lab, here we demonstrated the feasibility of the method in quickly and reliably printing out various large area electronic circuits. Particularly, the liquid metal ink made of GaIn24.5 alloy, with a high electrical resistivity of 2.98×10−7 Ω·m, can be rapidly printed on polyvinyl chloride (PVC) substrate with maximum sizes spanning from centimeter size to meter large. Most important of all, all these manufactures were achieved at an extremely low cost level which clearly shows the ubiquitous value of the liquid metal printer. To evaluate the working performance of the present electronics fabrication method, the electrical resistance and wire width of the printed circuits were investigated under multiple overprinting cycles. For practical illustration purpose, LED lighting conductive patterns which can serve as a functional electronic decoration art were fabricated on the flexible plastic substrate. The present work sets up an example for directly making large-scale ending consumer electronics via a high-efficiency and low-cost way.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Fast ◽  
Akarsh Lal ◽  
Amanda F. Durkin ◽  
Christopher B. Zachary ◽  
Anand K. Ganesan ◽  
...  

AbstractWe introduce a compact, fast large area multiphoton exoscope (FLAME) system with enhanced molecular contrast for macroscopic imaging of human skin with microscopic resolution. A versatile imaging platform with multiple modes of operation for comprehensive analysis of live or resected thick human skin tissue, it produces 3D images that encompass sub-mm2 to cm2 scale areas of tissue within minutes. The FLAME imaging platform, which expands on a design recently introduced by our group, features deep learning, additional scanning hardware elements and time-resolved single photon counting detection to uniquely allow fast discrimination and 3D virtual staining of melanin. We demonstrate its performance and utility by fast ex vivo and in vivo imaging of human skin. With the ability to provide rapid access to depth resolved images of skin over cm2 area and to generate 3D distribution maps of key sub-cellular skin components such as melanocytic dendrites and melanin, FLAME represents a promising imaging tool for enhancing diagnosis accuracy, guiding therapy and understanding skin biology.


Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 1081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohi Uddin Jewel ◽  
Mahmuda Akter Monne ◽  
Bhagyashree Mishra ◽  
Maggie Yihong Chen

Fully inkjet-printed device fabrication is a crucial goal to enable large-area printed electronics. The limited number of two-dimensional (2D) material inks, the bottom-gated structures, and the low current on/off ratio of thin-film transistors (TFTs) has impeded the practical applications of the printed 2D material TFTs. In the search for TFTs with high current ratios, we introduce a stable and efficient method of nitrogen-doped graphene (NDG) ink preparation for inkjet printing by liquid-phase exfoliation. The NDG thin film is print-stacked with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) by multiple printing passes to construct a MoS2–NDG stack. We demonstrate top-gated fully inkjet-printed MoS2–NDG transistors with silver drain, source, and gate electrodes, and a barium titanate (BaTiO3) dielectric. A 100% inkjet-printed MoS2–NDG vertical 2D active heterostructure layer transistor with a current on/off ratio of 1200 is exhibited. The results may lead towards the development of all-printed 2D material-based transistor switches.


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