Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) for robotic skin applications

柔性(可印刷)电子设备目前在传感器和储能设备中有应用，但受到元件之间不匹配的严重限制。由于生产高性能电路的难度很大，只有少数系统是基于可印刷电子设备制造的。相反，经典的硅电子学能够实现高性能，但缺乏灵活的衬底。因此，灵活的混合电子产品可以两全其美。这项技术依赖于将硅IC用于高性能电路组件，如信号处理、电源管理或计算，而传感可以通过大面积、灵活的印刷电子设备来完成。因此，建议开发一种电子皮肤系统，该系统依赖于由柔性电子设备组成的大面积传感面积，以及由传统IC实现的读出和处理部分。皮肤将由一个方形的传感器阵列组成，可以像刷新LCD屏幕一样读取这些传感器。主控制器将遍历地址或传感器单元，并将它们连接到调节电路。虽然市场上有一系列灵活的压力传感器，但即使是简单的系统，它们的价格也高达数千英镑。此外，他们缺乏决心，而且他们只提供了一种感觉。最重要的是，当传感器弯曲或扭曲时，传感器和调节电子设备之间的连接很容易断开。当打印系统的传感器部分时，可以组合各种类型的传感器，就像人类皮肤的情况一样。可以同时使用阻性和电容式压力传感器，其中阻性传感器提供快速响应，而电容式传感器提供温度稳定性。最重要的是，温度传感器、光线、湿度、材料应力等。此外，还可以增加评估皮肤结构完整性的传感器。这样的系统可以通过仅使用添加剂的工艺廉价地实现，该工艺通过使用丝网印刷机施加半导体和电介质层来工作。这种与传统硅IC互连的工艺在商业上是可用的，例如。NextFlex。由新加坡研究人员提出的开放源码过程存在，其通道长度仅为100微米。

Flexible(printable) electronics currently has applications in sensors and energy storage devices but is severely limited by the mismatch between components. Only a few 'systems' were build based on printable electronics, due to the hardship of producing high-performance circuits. On the contrary, the classic silicon electronics enables for high performance but lacks the flexible substrate. Therefore, Flexible Hybrid Electronics can be used to get the best of both worlds. The technology relies on the use of the silicon ICs for a high-performance component of the circuit like signal processing, power management, or computation, while the sensing can be done by large-area, flexible printed electronics. Therefore the proposal is to develop a system for electronic skin, which relies on a large sensing area build-out of flexible electronics, and readout and processing part realized by traditional ICs. The skin would consist of a square array of sensors, which can be read from similarly as LCD screens are refreshed. The main controller would iterate over addresses or sensor cells and connect them to the conditioning circuit. While a flexible array of pressure sensors are available on the market, their price goes in thousands of pounds for even simple systems. Moreover, their resolution is lacking, and they offer only one type of sense. On top of that, the connection between the sensor and conditioning electronics can be easily broken when the sensor is bent or twisted. When printing the sensor part of the system, various types of sensors could be combined, like in the case of human skin. There is a possibility of using both resistive and capacitive sensors for pressure, with resistive sensors giving a fast response, while capacitive sensing giving temperature stability. On top of that, temperature sensors, light, humidity, material stress, and more. Moreover, sensors assessing the structural integrity of the skin could be added. Such a system could be cheaply realized using additive-only processes, which work by applying semiconductor and dielectric layers with a screen-printer. Such processes, with interconnection to classic silicon ICs, are commercially available eg. NextFlex. Open source processes, presented by researchers from Singapore exist, with channel lengths as small 100 um presented.