Pressure sensors rivalling human skin
Nature Materials
September 13, 2010
The fabrication of flexible arrays of pressure sensors with sensitivity and response times rivalling those of human skin are reported online in Nature Materials this week. These ultrasensitive, flexible artificial skins will enable superior prosthetic devices and sensing technologies.
The sensors, created by two independent teams, consist of arrays of active transducers on flexible polymeric substrates. However, the two groups used different transduction mechanisms and substrates. Zhenan Bao and co-workers produced pressure-sensitive capacitors integrated into organic field-effect transistors. Ali Javey and colleagues used a field-effect transistor with arrays of nanowires, and a pressure-sensitive rubber layer that acts as a tunable resistor. Both teams constructed flexible pressure-sensitive sensors with high responsiveness to touch. “The prototype artificial skins reported have successfully emulated the pressure sensitivity of human skin”, says John J. Boland in an accompanying News and Views article.
doi: 10.1038/nmat2834
Research highlights
-
Jul 22
Electronics: Plastic microprocessor flexes its powerNature
-
Jul 20
Astronomy: Event Horizon Telescope zooms in on another black holeNature Astronomy
-
Jul 15
Quantum computing: A step towards error-corrected quantum computersNature
-
Jul 6
Astronomy: Black holes throw their weight aroundNature Astronomy
-
Jul 6
Physics: ATLAS experiment measurements support universal truth of particle physicsNature Physics
-
Jul 1
Physics: The next generation of atomic clocks in spaceNature
