Fully printed, flexible, large area organic optothermal sensors for human-machine-interfaces

Abstract Pyroelectric sensors presented in this work are based on polymers from the PVDF family which are comprised of a piezo- and/or pyroelectric polymer thin film capacitor integrated with either high performance organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) or electrochemical transistors (ECTs) acting as impedance converters, signal amplifiers and conditioners. For flexible integration with diverse electronic devices, large area processes such as screen printing applicable for industrial partners have been used for the fabrication of the sensors and ECT’s. With respect to the intended purpose for detection of human body radiation the absorbance of the impinging IR-light is dramatically increased by the application of printed carbon/Pedot topelectrodes, hence meeting the requirements for low-cost large area processibility. Here we present good working integrated sensor devices based on two components, being an organic thin film transitor with a high-k-nanocomposite gate dielectric or a fully printed electrochemical transistor and a PVDF-copolymer based sensor.