Organic Transistor Integerated Circuits for Large-Area Sensors

Abstract

It is believed that skin sensitivity will be important for future robots working in our daily life for home-care and entertainment purposes. However, relatively little progress has been made in the field of pressure recognition compared to the areas of sight and voice recognition, mainly because good artificial “electronic skin” with a large area and mechanical flexibility is not yet available. The fabrication of a sensitive skin consisting of thousands of pressure sensors would require a flexible switching matrix that cannot be realized with present silicon-based electronics. Organic field-effect transistors can be used complimentary to such conventional electronics because organic circuits are inherently flexible and potentially ultra-low in cost even for large area. In this paper, we describe that integration of organic transistors and rubber pressure sensors provides an ideal solution to realize a practical artificial skin.