Imperceptible magnetic sensor matrix system integrated with organic driver and amplifier circuits

Abstract

Artificial electronic skins (e-skins) comprise an integrated matrix of flexible devices arranged on a soft, reconfigurable surface. These sensors must perceive physical interaction spaces between external objects and robots or humans. Among various types of sensors, flexible magnetic sensors and the matrix configuration are preferable for such position sensing. However, sensor matrices must efficiently map the magnetic field with real-time encoding of the positions and motions of magnetic objects. This paper reports an ultrathin magnetic sensor matrix system comprising a 2 × 4 array of magnetoresistance sensors, a bootstrap organic shift register driving the sensor matrix, and organic signal amplifiers integrated within a single imperceptible platform. The system demonstrates high magnetic sensitivity owing to the use of organic amplifiers. Moreover, the shift register enabled real-time mapping of 2D magnetic field distribution.

Printable Transparent Microelectrodes toward Mechanically and Visually Imperceptible Electronics

“…An inverter circuit is a fundamental component in logic and analog circuits, and it is applicable to a sensor matrix system. [48] The inverter circuit configuration comprised a diode-load inverter consisting of two p-type OFETs (inset in Figure 7b), as designed in a previous work. [49] Figure 7b,c shows the transfer characteristics of the inverter circuits with and without the cross-aligned AgNWs, respectively.…”

Organic Thin Film Transistors in Mechanical Sensors

“…An impressive recent example of progress toward this end resulted in an bootstrap organic shift register for magnetic sensors, rather than mechanical sensors, yet still a meaningful achievement in this context. [ 15 ] The integration of everything into a pixel of an active matrix will represent a significant step in the development of flexible mechanical sensors. New applications are also being driven by the massive amounts of cheap computation available, because sensors, and in particular the sensing environments, are extremely complex and noisy systems.…”

“…This work builds upon the excellent tutorial review from Torsi et al from 2013, except here we enumerate the work done afterward and with a tighter focus. [ 5 ] Given the immense diversity in chemical properties, organic devices can be used to sense various toxic chemical species, [ 6,7 ] biological signatures, [ 8–10 ] light, [ 11–14 ] and others; [ 15,16 ] however, we limit the scope of this progress report to mechanical sensors integrated with OTFTs.…”

A durable nanomesh on-skin strain gauge for natural skin motion monitoring with minimum mechanical constraints

“…On-skin electronics are designed to be thin, soft, stretchable, and durable and can be seamlessly integrated to become part of the human body for continuous, long-term vital health monitoring (1)(2)(3)(4)(5). Among these electronics, strain gauges have attracted particular interest owing to their broad applications from human-machine interfaces to personal health diagnosis (6)(7)(8)(9)(10).…”