The transparent and flexible arrays use about 8,000 tassels, which are touch-sensitive transistors that can generate piezoelectric signals independently - meaning they emit electricity when mechanically agitated. As the researchers report this week in the journal Science each of those thousands of transistors comprises a bundle of some 1,500 zinc oxide nano-wires, which connect to electrodes via a thin layer of gold , enabling the arrays to pick up on changes in pressure as low as 10 kilo-pascals -- which is what human skin can detect.
"Any mechanical motion, such as the movement of arms or the fingers of a robot, could be translated to control signals," lead author Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Tech's school of materials Science and Engineering said in a news release. " This could make artificial skin smarter and more like the human skin . It would allow the skin to feel activity on the surface."
Mimicking the sense of touch electronically has long been the dream of many a researcher and has been accomplished by measuring changes in resistance . But the team at Georgia Tech experimented with a different approach , measuring tiny polarization changes when piezoelectric materials such as Zinc oxide ( In which current can accumulate ) are placed under mechanical stress. In these transistors, then, piezoelectric charges control the flow of current through the nano-wires.
Time will tell whether this tech will find its way into military uses; the work is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Science .
- Topics:Future tech, Robots, Science, Health tech
- Tags: robots, smart skin, transistors ,nanowires, prosthetics
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