Combining organic and printed electronics in Hybrid System in Foil (HySiF) based smart skin for robotic applications

Hybrid System in Foil (HySiF) technology has the potential to combine compact high-performance circuit integration on thin, flexible silicon chips with thin-film large-area components jointly on a polymer foil substrate. In this manuscript, such a HySiF technology demonstrator known as "Smart Skin" is presented. It contains bending stress sensors along with other modular technology components, such as display, wireless communication and thin-film battery, implemented in a thin foil substrate mounted onto a bionic adaptive robot gripper. For demonstration purposes, we have opted for two distinctly different smart-skin systems, i.e. one connected by wires and the second working autonomously. Here, we have presented the fabrication details and test results of the first mentioned fully functional smart-skin demonstrator. For the second generation of smart skin, the feasibility of combining a matrix of thin-film strain gauges and organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) along with embedding a silicon chip inside the foil is evaluated.