Hanyang University Engineers Create High-Density Artificial Skin
Engineers in South Korea have developed a vertically integrated dual-gate transistor designed to give robots and prosthetics a human-like sense of touch. By stacking a triboelectric sensing layer onto a thin-film transistor, the team created a compact system capable of detecting both physical contact and proximity with high precision.
Associate Professor Jaekyun Kim and his team at Hanyang University’s Department of Photonics and Nanoelectronics engineered the device to solve a persistent hurdle in robotics: the inability to tune sensitivity in large-area sensor arrays. Traditional triboelectric nanogenerators often struggle with scalability, but this new architecture minimizes pixel footprint by using a polydimethylsiloxane sensing layer stacked directly above an indium-tin-zinc-oxide transistor.
The system functions by monitoring current fluctuations within the transistor. When an object approaches, the accumulated triboelectric charge acts as a top-gate voltage, modulating the electrical flow. Because the bottom gate independently sets the baseline current, the device allows for precise, tunable sensitivity. In laboratory testing, a 10x10 array successfully registered finger touches and detected objects at distances up to 500 micrometers.
Durability remains a core feature of the design. The sensors maintained consistent performance over 1,000 contact-separation cycles, showing response and recovery times of 127 and 212 milliseconds respectively. Published in Nano Energy, the research offers a scalable path toward advanced human-machine interfaces, potentially improving safety and tactile feedback in healthcare robotics and wearable health-monitoring systems.
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first!