Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) for robotic skin applications

柔性（可打印）电子产品目前在传感器和能量存储设备中有应用，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”是基于可打印电子设备构建的。相反，传统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。该技术依赖于硅集成电路的高性能组件，如信号处理、电源管理或计算，而传感可以由大面积、柔性印刷电子器件完成。因此，本文提出了一种电子皮肤系统，该系统依赖于柔性电子元件构建的大传感区域，以及传统集成电路实现的读取和处理部分。皮肤将由一个正方形的传感器阵列组成，这些传感器可以像刷新LCD屏幕一样读取。主控制器将遍历地址或传感器单元，并将它们连接到调理电路。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，他们只提供一种感觉。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。在打印系统的传感器部分时，可以将各种类型的传感器组合在一起，就像人体皮肤的情况一样。有可能同时使用电阻式和电容式压力传感器，电阻式传感器给出快速响应，而电容式传感器给出温度稳定性。最重要的是，温度传感器、光线、湿度、材料应力等等。此外，还可以添加评估皮肤结构完整性的传感器。这样的系统可以用加性工艺廉价地实现，这种工艺是通过在丝网打印机上应用半导体和介电层来工作的。这种与经典硅集成电路互连的工艺在商业上是可行的。NextFlex。来自新加坡的研究人员提出的开源流程，其通道长度小至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.