Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) for robotic skin applications

用于机器人皮肤应用的柔性混合电子 (FHE)

• 批准号: 2278609
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2278609
• 关键词: Flexible; Hybrid; Electronics; FHE; robotic

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.

柔性（可印刷）电子产品目前在传感器和储能设备中有应用，但受到组件之间不匹配的严重限制。由于生产高性能电路的困难，只有少数“系统”是基于可印刷电子产品构建的。相反，经典的硅电子器件能够实现高性能，但缺乏柔性衬底。因此，柔性混合电子可以用来获得两全其美。该技术依赖于将硅IC用于电路的高性能组件，如信号处理，电源管理或计算，而传感可以通过大面积，灵活的印刷电子产品完成。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器件构建的大传感区域，以及由传统IC实现的读出和处理部分。皮肤将由传感器组成的正方形阵列，可以像LCD屏幕刷新一样读取。主控制器将转换地址或传感器单元，并将它们连接到调节电路。虽然市场上有灵活的压力传感器阵列，但即使是简单的系统，其价格也高达数千英镑。此外，他们的决议是缺乏的，他们只提供一种类型的意义。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。存在使用电阻和电容传感器用于压力的可能性，其中电阻传感器给出快速响应，而电容感测给出温度稳定性。最重要的是，温度传感器，光线，湿度，材料应力等等。此外，可以添加评估皮肤结构完整性的传感器。这样的系统可以使用仅添加剂的工艺来廉价地实现，该工艺通过使用丝网印刷机施加半导体和介电层来工作。这样的工艺，与传统的硅IC互连，是商业上可用的，例如。NextFlex。开放源码的过程中，提出的研究人员从新加坡存在，与通道长度小至100微米。