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1, JUNE 2001 41
Sensitive Skin
Vladimir J. Lumelsky, Fellow, IEEE, Michael S. Shur, Fellow, IEEE, and Sigurd Wagner, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—Sensitive skin is a large-area, flexible array of sensitive skin, and many novel ideas have already emerged.
sensors with data processing capabilities, which can be used They will allow us to fulfill our dream for machines sensitive to
to cover the entire surface of a machine or even a part of a their surroundings and operating in unstructured environment.
human body. Depending on the skin electronics, it endows its
carrier with an ability to sense its surroundings via the skin’s This paper focuses on the principles, methodology, and pro-
proximity, touch, pressure, temperature, chemical/biological, or totypes of sensitive skin-like devices, and the related system in-
other sensors. Sensitive skin devices will make possible the use of telligence and software that are necessary to make those devices
unsupervised machines operating in unstructured, unpredictable work. As discussed below, sensitive skin represents a new par-
surroundings—among people, among many obstacles, outdoors adigm in sensing and control. These devices will open doors to
on a crowded street, undersea, or on faraway planets. Sensitive
skin will make machines “cautious” and thus friendly to their a whole class of novel enabling technologies, with a potentially
environment. This will allow us to build machine helpers for the very wide impact. Far-reaching applications not feasible today
disabled and elderly, bring sensing to human prosthetics, and will be realized, ranging from medicine and biology to the ma-
widen the scale of machines’ use in service industry. With their chine industry and defense.
ability to produce and process massive data flow, sensitive skin Some applications that sensitive skin devices will make
devices will make yet another advance in the information revolu-
tion. This paper surveys the state of the art and research issues possible are yet hard to foresee. Flexible semiconductor films
that need to be resolved in order to make sensitive skin a reality. and flexible metal interconnects that will result from this work
The paper is partially based on the report of the Sensitive Skin will allow us to develop new inexpensive consumer electronics
Workshop conducted jointly by the National Science Foundation products, new types of displays, printers, new ways to store
(NSF) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and share information (like electronic paper and “upgradeable”
in October 1999 in Arlington, VA, of which the three co-authors
were the co-chairs [1]. books and maps). New device concepts suitable for large area
flexible semiconductor films will lead to new sensors that will
Index Terms—Automation, electronics, large area sensor arrays, find applications in space exploration and defense, specifically
material science, robotics, sensing, sensitive skin.
in mine detection and active camouflage.
An ability of parallel processing of massive amounts of data
I. INTRODUCTION from millions of sensors will find applications in environmental
control and power industry. These areas will be further devel-
I N THE famous Russian novel Master and Margarita by
Mikhail Bulgakov, one of the characters, a high-level
Moscow bureaucrat, offends the Devil. For a swift and terrible
oped because of the highly interdisciplinary nature of the work
on sensitive skin, which lies at the intersection of information
punishment, he is banished from his suit, but his suit continues technology, mechanical engineering, material science, biotech-
to sit at his desk, signing papers, barking commands, and nology, and micro- and nanoelectronics.
generally functioning in the same way as its former wearer. Availability of sensitive skin hardware is likely to spur theo-
This talking suit evokes the image of sensing and acting retical and experimental work in many other disciplines that are
cloth—a bendable, stretchable skin with intelligent processing far removed from robotics. This stimulus is comparable to that
capabilities. Present-day electronics technology does not allow which triggered the explosion of control theory in the 1940s and
us to produce such sensitive skin. Not yet. But the needs for 1950s, in direct response to the challenge posed by the appear-
it are big and increasing. And the necessary tools are at hand. ance of fundamentally new hardware, such as jet fighters and
Several novel technologies can be used in order to fabricate radars.
To exemplify the concept of sensitive skin, a prototype of a
sensitive skin module is shown in Fig. 1. The module contains
active infrared sensor pairs (LED detector), each of
Manuscript received September 8, 2000; revised February 27, 2001. This
work was largely based on the report of the October’99 NSF-DARPA Sensi- which can sense objects within a narrow cone at a distance up to
tive Skin Workshop. All Workshop participants contributed to the discussions about 20 cm. One of the most powerful abilities of the sensitive
on the issues around sensitive skins, and hence, to this text. The associate editor skin as applied to motion control is demonstrated in Fig. 2. Here
coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Prof.
Mona Zaghloul. a skin-equipped robot arm manipulator dances with a ballerina.
V. J. Lumelsky is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the De- She does not hesitate to turn her back to the “partner,” fully ex-
partment of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 pecting a “human” reaction. Since every point of the robot body
USA (e-mail: lumelsky@engr.wisc.edu).
M. S. Shur is with the Center for Integrated Electronics and Electronics has its own sensing, no artifacts such as occlusions (a typical
Manufacturing, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180 USA problem, e.g., for vision devices) can interfere with the sensing.
(e-mail: shurm@rpi.edu). A block-diagram of the sensitive skin interconnects is shown in
S. Wagner is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton Uni-
versity, Princeton, NJ 08544-0001 USA (e-mail: wagner@princeton.edu). Fig. 3. Fig. 4 illustrates some of the numerous potential applica-
Publisher Item Identifier S 1530-437X(01)04347-0. tions of sensitive skin envisioned by Motorola Co. researchers.
1530–437X/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
42 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 1, NO. 1, JUNE 2001
D. Impetus for Information Technology side by side with a powerful unattended moving machine. It
is difficult to imagine that one could stand next to a powerful
Sensitive skin devices will include thousands and millions
moving machine and trust it enough to turn one’s back to it, or
of elements that generate and process tremendous amounts of
expect it to step aside when passing. Do we not have more than
information, in parallel and in real time. This will hence be a
enough invasion of machinery in our lives? To need a very new
new physical basis of information technology. With the eventual
product, one must first experience it. Recall the skepticism about
ubiquity of the sensing skin on various machinery, it is likely
the Xerographic copier (even in the parent company) when this
to bring the biggest leap in information technology hardware
technology was just appearing—people were still unaware of
since the introduction of computers. In fact, the sheer amounts
the multiplicity of needs that easy copying could satisfy.
of information continuously generated and processed by sensi-
tive skin devices will make them challenge humans as predom-
inant producers and users of information. II. REQUIREMENTS TO SENSITIVE SKIN DEVICES
Four groups of research issues must be addressed in order to
E. Societal Needs and Concerns develop sensitive skin: Skin Materials, Sensing Devices, Signal
and Data Processing, and Applications. Consider them one by
1) Unstructured Machine Automation: Sensitive skins will one.
reduce the need for low value-added services by vastly ex-
panding the reach of automated machinery. They will bring the A. Skin Materials
kind of productivity gains to service industries that integrated
circuits have brought to manufacturing. Machines that by virtue Sensitive skin material (substrate) holds embedded sensors
of their size, power, and operation of their moving parts can and related signal processing hardware. It needs to be flexible
present danger to the surrounding objects or be damaged by enough for attaching it to the outer surfaces of machines with
them will be able to operate safely in their environment when moving parts and flexible joints. The skin must stretch, and de-
equipped with the sensitive skin. For example, with the help sirably shrink and wrinkle the way human skin does, or to have
of the sensitive skin covering its body, a semi-autonomous other compensating features. Otherwise, machine parts may be-
machine helper in a senior citizen’s house or a robot probe in a come “exposed” as they move relative to each other. For ex-
deep space experiment will be carrying out its function without ample, Kapton® material, by the Dupont Corporation, can hold
jeopardizing its own safety and that of the surrounding objects. electronics, can bend, but cannot stretch. Stretching is especially
No such machinery exists today. Automation for unstructured challenging, as it may require materials that have never been
environments can completely transform the face of machine used in printed circuits.
automation in the 21st Century. Wiring must keep its integrity when sensitive skin is stretched
a) Health industry: Sensitive skin will supplant sensing or wrinkled. This requirement calls for novel wire materials,
ability of the human skin in limb prosthetics and as a replace- e.g., conductive elastomers or vessels carrying conductive
ment of damaged human skin. It will augment human sensing liquid, or novel ways of wire design with traditional materials,
in wearable clothing, by monitoring, processing and wireless such as helical, stretchable wires.
transfer of information about the well-being of the person Still another possibility is semiconducting textiles, a tech-
wearing sensitive skin. This will advance the post-traumatic nology that will find applications in wearable computing and
health care, care for disabled and elderly persons, and moni- wearable electronics. The efforts in developing such materials
toring of military personnel on the battlefield. are now under way at several universities and several compa-
b) Environment-friendly technology: For the first time in nies, including NCSU, IBM, Phillips, BIT’s, Inc., and Printed
history, machines will be endowed with a capacity to be careful. Transistors, Inc.
By its very nature, sensitive skin will contribute in a dramatic
way to the reversal of the well-known negative impact of ma- B. Sensing Devices
chines on our environment, across a wide spectrum of natural Sensitive skin components have to be deployed in two-dimen-
and man-made settings. We often hear about the role of com- sional (2-D) or even quasi-three-dimensional (3-D), layered) ar-
puter revolution and office automation in the growth of economy rays of sufficiently high density. A representative model would
and improved efficiency, which in turn affects the quality of be a piece of skin of 1 1 m , with sensors spread uniformly
life. Note the difference: while unstructured machine automa- at a pitch of 1 1 mm, with the total of 1 million sensors. This
tion will have a similar effect on the economy, its use in service model immediately points to the need to mass-produce sensi-
industry will have a direct impact on the quality of human life. tive skins as large-area integrated circuits. Smaller arrays may
Biology and medical science thrive to prolong human life; the be of use as well: the key feature is that the skin should allow,
unstructured machine automation will constitute a systematic by itself or with appropriate data processing, to identify with
effort by engineers to improve the quality of life. reasonable accuracy the points of the machine’s body where the
c) Difficulties of acceptance: As with any fundamentally corresponding sensor readings take place.
new and powerful technology, sensitive skin technology may Ideally, sensors and their signal processing hardware should
evoke adverse psychological reactions, with a potential of di- be spread within the array so as to allow cutting it to any shape
minishing its impact. Today we are psychologically unprepared (disc, rectangle, an arbitrary figure) without losing the entire
for automatic moving machines operating in our midst. We are sensing and control functionality. This suggests interesting
not sure we need them. We are uneasy about the idea of living studies in hardware architecture. Any sensing modalities,
LUMELSKY et al.: SENSITIVE SKIN 45
including proximity or tactile, discrete or continuous, are and modify the motion accordingly. Here, the arm dynamics,
acceptable. Sensor arrays with special or unique properties are sensing resolution, and the allowed speed of motion are all tied
of much interest, for example a cleanable and washable skin in some relationship. For example, if the sensing is “myopic”
for “dirty” tasks in nuclear/chemical waste site applications; and the arm is heavy, the Helper will move slower, “fearing”
radiation-hardened skin for nuclear reactor and space appli- a collision, no matter how good its control system is. Since
cations; and skins that can smell, taste, or react to ambient the Helper’s arm is a highly nonlinear system, realizing good
light. The ability to measure distance to objects would be a real-time control is a challenging problem of control theory.
great advantage for enabling dexterous motion of the machine
equipped with the skin. B. Need for New Control Theory
For self-diagnosis and reliability, “self-sensing” ability of the Note, for example, that the admittedly complex control
skin is highly desirable; this may include sensing of contami- system of today’s flying aircraft focuses primarily on achieving
nation, dust, chemical substances, temperature, radiation on its desired properties of motion at a single point of the air-
surface, as also detection of failure of individual skin sensors craft—say, its center of gravity. Other characteristics, such as
and an ability to work around failed areas. accounting for body dynamics, appear as constraints on control.
No existing types of sensors are likely to satisfy all require- However, when controlling a sensitive skin-equipped machine,
ments. For example, a light sensor is fast and accurate; sonar the control system should be able to focus intermittently on
and capacitance sensors require less power but have poor reso- various single and multiple points of potential collision on
lution. Consequently, new sensors, or new combinations of ex- the machine’s body, and modify the control accordingly, all
isting sensors, or new ways of packaging existing sensors may within the draconian constraints of real-time operation and
be developed to satisfy these needs. changing kinematics of the body. Perhaps a better analogy is
the control of a bat flying among tree branches, or attempts of
C. Signal/Data Processing reconfigurable control for the changing shape of a jet fighter
To produce continuous motion, the sampling rates of today’s in battle. These complications call for novel, exciting control
typical computer-controlled moving machines should be in the theory.
range of 30–50 Hz. Taking 50 Hz as an example, within the
available 20 ms sampling period all skin sensors must be polled, C. Motion Planning Based on Sensitive Skin Data
information from those sensors that sense objects passed to the This research is likely to make use of tools from graph
machine control and analyzed, and motion commands for the theory, search algorithms, computational geometry, differential
next step sent to the drive motors and executed. With possibly geometry, and topology. One serious issue, largely not ad-
millions of sensors per 1 m of the machine’s surface, this re- dressed today, is the symbiosis of real-time motion planning
quires a very high data bandwidth and sophisticated data pro- algorithms with control of the machine’s body dynamics and
cessing algorithms. with nonholonomic constraints on the machine motion. That is,
Large numbers of discrete sensors on the sensitive skin make based on the continuous stream of data from the sensitive skin,
it advantageous to use lower level data processing locally at the planning algorithm not only has to produce collision-free
each sensor. This can include analog-to-digital processing, motion for every point of the machine’s body, but it has to do it
sensor calibration, individual sensor based distance measure- within the system’s dynamic constraints (masses, accelerations,
ments, etc., and calls for highly parallel processing and efficient etc.) and the design constraints of its actuators (e.g., an auto-
software architectures. mobile cannot turn on the spot and must move along a curve).
Sensitive skin is a natural network of nodes–sensors dis-
tributed along a 2-D surface lying in 3-D space. There is a D. Use of Sensitive Skin in Bioengineering
natural notion of neighboring nodes and far away nodes, the
There is an intriguing possibility of combining this artificial
notion of distance between the nodes along the skin and in
skin and natural living skin, to help people with lacking or di-
3-D space, and the notion of skin topology—expressed, for
minished sensing abilities, or in prosthetic devices, or in aug-
example, in the skin multiconnectedness. This situation points
menting human sensing via wearable clothing, such as for mil-
to a multiplicity of schemes for intelligent control. Can, for
itary personnel.
example, such a network be taught motion algorithms, or learn
motion strategies from observing the machine’s environment
E. Man–Machine Systems
during its operation?
Human and machine intelligence could be merged in
III. NEW HARDWARE STIMULATES NEW RESEARCH real-time motion planning. Envision, for example, a pilot
trying to keep his helicopter hovering low above the ground
There is a number of disciplines that are not directly tied to to collect samples from the rain forest without colliding with
the development of sensitive skin but will likely be stimulated the underbrush. Besides informing the pilot of any undesirable
by its availability. contacts with plants below, data from the sensitive skin-covered
helicopter underbody can be directly used for automatic control
A. Sensing and Dynamic Control of the hovering height to avoid collision. Prototypes of control
Consider our home Helper mentioned above. When its systems that combine human and machine intelligence in real
arm senses an obstacle, the control system must analyze it time have already been demonstrated [2].
46 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 1, NO. 1, JUNE 2001
A cm , while its photocurrent in daylight can reach (and also the address/readout lines) lines will be up to 30
A cm . Thus the dynamic range of these photosensors is very cm long. Assume that each line serves 30/0.1 300 elements,
large, and very high signal-to-noise ratios can be achieved; that the capacitive load per element is three times the TFT gate
one still desires sensitivity down to very low light levels. In feedthrough capacitance, and that the lines are printed with the
sensitive skin many signals are collected simultaneously over resolution of 10 m (except at the gates, where they are 20 m
a large area. These signals are susceptible to cross talk, and wide to account for misalignment). Then the line delay can reach
the skin may function as an antenna. Therefore, sensitive skin 10 s for the elements farthest away from the processor. This
may be particularly sensitive to noise generated in transmission delay is equal to the TFT gate delay, which suggests that the A/D
between the individual elements and the central processor. conversion rate in sensitive skin could come to be dominated by
This situation motivates on-element D/A conversion, which is clock delay unless clock synchronization schemes, e.g., clock
entirely feasible. trees, are designed into the skin.
If the elements are read out with the same maximum value of
C. Transistor Materials, Gate Delay, Bit Rate, and Bandwidth line delay, approximately ten samples per second could be read
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) dominates large-area electronics at from each sensor element to the central processor.
present. The key performance metric of a-Si is its electron mo- The prospect is good for raising the electron mobility by close
bility of 1 cm V s . A thin-film transistor made of a-Si typ- to two orders of magnitude in the low-temperature semicon-
ically has an ON state output resistance of 1 M . Its OFF state ductor process technologies needed for sensitive skin. Further-
resistance is . The gate feedthrough capacitance is a more, the use of novel printing techniques such as imprinting
few tenths of a pF. Thus the typical time for charging a gate would enable shortening the TFT channel by an order of mag-
through an a-Si TFT is a few tenths of a s. Polycrystalline sil- nitude. Introducing these new technologies would reduce the
icon, made by the crystallization of a-Si at high temperature, channel resistance by a factor of 100 to 10 k , and the gate
has an electron mobility of close to 100 cm V s , and a hole delay to 0.1 s. These developments would raise the sampling
mobility of 30 cm V s . TFT’s of polycrystalline silicon rate to 1000 per second.
have an ON state output resistance of the order of 10 k , with
charging times of tens of nanoseconds. All the new semiconduc- D. Thin Film MEMS on Flexible Substrates
tors that are under study for large-area electronics have transport The fabrication of silicon electronics into sensitive skin
properties that lie between those of a-Si and polycrystalline Si. backplanes can be integrated with silicon based sensor devices.
These include organic semiconductors and new forms of silicon, Among these, silicon photodetectors are the most prominent.
such as deposited microcrystalline silicon, laser crystallized sil- Silicon transistor/photosensor cells would follow the structure
icon, polycrystalline silicon made on steel at high temperature, of amorphous silicon based photosensor arrays [9]. An impor-
and A B and A B semiconductors deposited on flexible sub- tant recent development is thin film microelectromechanical
strates of cloth from water solutions at temperatures close to (MEMS) devices on plastic substrates [10]. These devices
room temperature. It is useful to keep in mind that in sensitive demonstrate that mechanical sensors (and actuators) can be
skin circuits the gate delays will lie between 10 ns and 1 s. built on the type of flexible substrate that sensitive skin requires.
The ON resistance of a typical amorphous silicon thin film
transistor with channel width-to-length ratio of 5 is 1 M , and
V. A B AND A B SENSORS ON FLEXIBLE SUBSTRATES
its gate insulator capacitance 1 pF. Assume conservatively that
this transistor is incorporated in a circuit with a gate delay ten As discussed above, one of the key challenges to the suc-
times the RC value, thus 10 s. Note that the electron transit cessful development of sensitive skin devices is the develop-
time through the TFT channel would be of the order of 0.1 s, ment of large area sensor and detector arrays, which can be
and therefore would not limit the circuit speed. fabricated on flexible and, ideally, stretchable substrates. Such
Let us configure these transistors as an on-element A/D con- substrates would include also textiles, and, hence the sensitive
verter. Pixel-level A/D conversion with a converter using skin technology will also be enabling technology for wearable
only 18 transistors has been reported [8]. However, conver- electronics and wearable computing. Several technologies now
sion needs oversampling at 64 or 128 times the Nyquist rate. The compete for such applications. Amorphous Si integrated circuits
necessary high clock rates may pose a problem. Therefore, let have been used to drive 25″ flat panel displays, and prototype
us consider a simple 4-bit or 8-bit dual-slope A/D converter, in- a-Si integrated circuits have been demonstrated on flexible sub-
cluding latch and shift register for serial readout, which could be strates (see Section IV). Another technology, which might be
designed from 100 transistors. This transistor count assumes suitable for such applications, is based on organic semiconduc-
seven transistors for each operational amplifier, 32 transistors tors, such as pentacene (see Section VI).
for control logic, and two transistors per bit for each of counter, In this section, we briefly review recently emerging
latch, and shift register. The rate of the A/D converter is set by technology of polycrystalline A B and A B compounds
the flip-flops of the counter, and the shift register. Then a 4-bit deposited on flexible substrates and even on cloth, at temper-
counter will have an A/D speed of 0.2 ms, and an 8-bit con- atures close to room temperature [11]. These polycrystalline
verter of 3 ms. films, with grains oriented on average in the same direction,
The A/D speed may be slowed down by the propagation of might be used for photosensors, as well as for proximity and
the clock signal that is distributed from the central processor. tactile sensors. As an example of such a system prototype,
If this processor controls 0.1 m of sensitive skin, the clock shown in Fig. 6 is a one-dimensional photoconductive array
48 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 1, NO. 1, JUNE 2001
fabricated on a flexible substrate (a piece of a view foil) [12]. sistors (TFT’s) with the on-to-off ratio as high as 10 [17].
Another application of these materials is for flexible solar cells These mobility values exceed the values obtained for main-
for on-board power supply for sensitive skin and/or wearable stream -Si : H TFT technology. Klauk et al. also demonstrated
electronics applications. pentacene-based electronic circuits such as five-stage ring oscil-
This approach to fabricating sensitive skin is based on a new lators with propagation delay of 73 s per gate [18]. This tech-
process of depositing polycrystalline CdSe (1.75 eV), CdS nology needs fairly low gate dielectric and active layers depo-
(2.4 eV), PbS (0.4 eV) [13], PbSe (0.24 eV) and Cu S (semi- sition temperatures [19], and, therefore, might be quite suitable
conductor/metal) films on flexible substrates at temperatures for fabricating organic semiconductor sensor and transistor ar-
close to room temperature (eV here are electron-volts). Large rays on flexible substrates (see Fig. 7). Organic TFTs (OTFTs)
area surfaces can be covered. Also, ternary and quaternary can be also used as drivers of organic light emitting diodes
compounds as well as heterostructures can be deposited. The (OLED’s) for applications in high-resolution active matrix dis-
work is under way to develop all basic device building blocks plays [20].
and basic devices—from ohmic contacts to p–n junctions,
heterojunctions, solar cells, and thin film transistors [14]. VII. MANUFACTURING OF LARGE-AREA SENSITIVE SKIN
Samples with areas up to inches have been reported (see
Because the material properties and the material patterns are
Fig. 6); the process can be scaled up.
optimized best when done in separate steps, the application or
Also under way is the work to develop semiconductor threads
modification of active material in IC fabrication is separated
and semiconductor cloth. These semiconducting and metal films
from its patterning. To directly print active circuits, one must de-
will serve as building blocks for thin-film technology, which
vise materials that can be applied and patterned in a single step.
will enable us to develop the sensitive skin arrays. Their proper-
The materials needed for the printing of sensor circuits include
ties are strongly affected by processing. For example, the dark
metallic conductors, insulators, semiconductors for transistors
resistance of the CdSe films can be reduced by more than five
and light emitters, piezoelectric materials, etc. This approach to
orders of magnitude using thermal annealing in the temperature
the printing of active circuits explores the territory that lies be-
range from 100 C to 200 C. The photosensitivity of PbS films
tween IC’s and printed-wire boards. In effect, sensitive skin de-
can be increased by few orders of magnitude by annealing in
vices will contain active circuits monolithically integrated with
the temperature range of 110–140 C and optimized ambience.
their packaging.
More recently, a new technique of increasing photosensitivity
Completed thin-film circuits are at most a few micrometers
of CdS films processed at temperatures close to room temper-
thick. Therefore, the substrate and encapsulation constitute the
atures has been proposed [15]. These new material systems are
bulk of the finished product. Reduction of their weight and
ideally suited for sensitive skin applications, since these films
thickness becomes important. When the substrate is reduced
are suitable for development of optical, thermal, piezoelectric
to a thickness where it becomes flexible, it also becomes
and pyroelectric [16] sensors.
usable in continuous, roll-to-roll paper-like production. The
finished circuit then is a flexible foil, and using equally thin
VI. ORGANIC ELECTRONICS AND OPTOELECTRONICS ON encapsulation will preserve this flexibility. Rugged thin-film
FLEXIBLE SUBSTRATES circuits are a natural consequence of the mechanics of thin foil
The performance of organic semiconductor devices has dra- substrates.
matically improved in recent years. Gundlach et al. reported a In devising printing techniques for fabricating sensitive skin,
mobility of 2.1 cm /V-s for organic pentacene thin film tran- the questions of feature size and of overlay registration must be
LUMELSKY et al.: SENSITIVE SKIN 49
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT [22] S. Y. Chou, P. R. Krauss, and P. J. Renstrom, Science 272, 1996, vol. 85.
Michael S. Shur (M’79–SM’83–F’89) received the Sigurd Wagner (SM’78–F’00) received the Ph.D.
M.S.E.E. degree (with honors) from St. Petersburg degree from the University of Vienna, Austria, in
Electrotechnical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia, and 1968 and came to the U.S. as a Postdoctoral Fellow
the Ph.D. degree in physics and mathematics and the at The Ohio State University, Columbus.
Dr. Sci. degree in physics and mathematics degree, He worked on semiconductor memories and het-
both from the A. F. Ioffe Institute of Technology, in erojunction solar cells at the Bell Telephone Labo-
1992. ratories from 1970 to 1978. From 1978 to 1980, he
He has held research or faculty positions at dif- was Chief of the Photovoltaic Research Branch of the
ferent universities, including A.F. Ioffe Institute, Cor- Solar Energy Research Institute, Golden, CO. Since
nell University, Ithaca, NY, University of Minnesota, 1980, has been Professor of electrical engineering at
Minneapolis, and the University of Virginia, Char- Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, where he con-
lottesville, where he was John Money Professor of Electrical Engineering and ducts a program on thin-film electronics with current emphasis on flexible elec-
served as Director of Applied Electrophysics Laboratories. He is now Patricia tronics, on novel processes for silicon thin film transistors on plastic and steel,
W. and C. Sheldon Roberts’48 Professor of Solid State Electronics, Professor and on the direct printing of device materials. He holds 12 U.S. patents and
of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy, Professor of Information Tech- has published about 400 technical papers. He is helping to lay the groundwork
nology, and Associate Director of Center for Integrated Electronics and Elec- for the new industry of macroelectronics by developing concepts, materials, de-
tronics Manufacturing at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. He is Ed- vices, and processes for large-area electronics.
itor-in-Chief of the International Journal of High Speed Electronics and Sys- Dr. Wagner is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Hum-
tems, Editor of a book series on Special Topics in Electronics and Systems (Sin- boldt Foundation and is a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of
gapore: World Scientific), and Member, Honorary Board of Solid State Elec- Science.
tronics. He is one of the co-developers of AIM-Spice.
Dr. Shur is fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of Eta Kappa
Nu, Sigma Xi, and Tau Beta Pi, Electrochemical Society; Electromagnetic
Academy, Materials Research Society, SPIE, ASEE, and an elected member
and former Chair of U.S. Commission D, International Union of Radio Science.
From 1990–1993, he served as an Associate Editor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
ELECTRON DEVICES. He has served as Chair, Program Chair, and Organizing
and Program Committee Member of many IEEE conferences and as Member,
IEEE Awards Committee. In 1994, the St. Petersburg State Technical Univer-
sity awarded him an Honorary Doctorate. He is also a co-author of the paper
that received the best paper award at GOMAC-98 and a co-author of the best
poster paper award at MRS-99. In 1999, he received van der Ziel Award from
ISDRS-99 and Commendation for Excellence in Technical Communications
from Laser Focus World. In 2000, he was listed as one of the most quoted
researchers in his field.