Mirai for e-skin via collaboration with a large company in Japan
2021-11-18
Electronic skin with the sensibility of a fingertip is the focus of one of the seven projects that have granted seed money in the MIRAI call for Academia/Industry collaborations.
During MIRAI 2.0 Research & Innovation week in June 2021, Intsam through Vinnova, Sweden’s Innovation Agency, announced a call for funding applications. The call aimed at initiating new collaborations between universities, businesses and public sector organizations in Sweden and Japan. Seven projects have now been funded covering all subject areas within MIRAI 2.0 – ageing, sustainability, materials science, artificial intelligence and innovation/entrepreneurship.
The MIRAI funding with the focus on electronic skin represents an important step and recognition for the work carried out at the Division of Solid-State Electronics on tactile sensing. A first prototype of the sensor was done using electronics on a PCB and published at Nano Energy. The concept is being used in the EU´s H2020 FET-Open B-CRATOS project. In the MIRAI project integrated electronics close to the array of tactile sensors so the number of sensors can be increased and decreased the size of the complete sensor and electronics. Our long-term goal is an e-skin that can be placed on a finger, with hundred or more sensor points in a square centimeter or so, on a curved surface. A scenario that requires flexible electronics to be merged with, for instance, PDMS (silicone).
The Japanese company Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) has such technology, for IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) on any substrate, and we have set up a cooperation with them to evaluate the usefulness of their technology for our application. The MIRAI funding is to support such evaluation and support the collaboration with SEL.
Want to know more:
- Read the work on the first prototype of tactile sensor published at Nano Energy.
- Visit EU´s H2020 FET-Open B-CRATOS project website.
- Read the MIRAI´s news release.
