{"title":"Flexible TFT Read-Out Circuit Blocks for Large Area Sensor Array System Integration Measuring Photovoltaic Modules and Batteries","authors":"Seyed Mojtaba Sadati Faramarzi;Nikolas Papadopoulos;Jan Genoe;Kris Myny","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3433322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3433322","url":null,"abstract":"Herein, we report the design and characterization of analog building blocks in low-temperature poly silicon (LTPS) thin-film technology. These circuit blocks are targeted to be used as the fundamental elements of read-out circuitry in a large array of sensors integrated inside solar modules and batteries. The circuits presented here show unparalleled performance for applications that require stable operation over temperature ranges and demand low power consumption. We start with single thin-film transistor (TFT) device characterization and study variation and onset voltage change over different temperatures. Afterward, we analyze the performance of a current source designed in LTPS technology. A low-voltage LTPS operational amplifier (OpAmp) with supply voltage as low as 6 V is presented next, and finally, a high-speed latched comparator with low input offset and clock frequency up to 1 MHz is demonstrated. Using these building blocks to create analog interfaces along with sensor arrays integrated in energy devices enables precise sensor measurement resolution in solar modules and batteries.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 7","pages":"334-340"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142565610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Advances in Polymer-Based Microwave Absorbers—From Design Principles to Technological Breakthroughs: A Review","authors":"Shovan Ray;Ravi Panwar","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3432103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3432103","url":null,"abstract":"Designing effective microwave-absorbing materials (MAMs) and microwave-absorbing structures (MASs) can be complex and requires a deep understanding of microwave absorption theory, material science, and engineering principles. This review article offers an extensive overview of polymer-constituted MAMs and MASs, highlighting their significance in modern electromagnetic interference (EMI) mitigation and stealth applications. Polymer-based MAMs have gained significant attention due to their tunable electromagnetic (EM) properties, lightweight nature, flexibility, and versatility in design. This article dives into the synthesis methods, material properties, and various underlying EM mechanisms that govern the absorption behavior of these polymers in different frequency ranges. This article surveys various polymer-based systems such as intrinsically conducting polymers (ICPs), polymer nanocomposites, metamaterials (MMs), and frequency-selective surfaces (FSSs) elucidating their unique features in microwave absorption applications. It explores the critical factors influencing absorption performance, including dielectric and magnetic properties, filler content, morphology, and thickness. In addition, this article addresses the challenges associated with achieving broadband absorption with a lightweight and conformal structure. The comprehensive survey of recent research contributions and technological advancements demonstrates the potential applications of polymer-constituted microwave absorbers in diverse fields. It also discusses developing novel fabrication and performance evaluation techniques for polymer-constituted absorbers. In summary, this article is useful for researchers in designing and optimizing polymer-based MAMs and MASs.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 9","pages":"401-417"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142844235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Silk-Aloe Vera Composite Piezoelectric Film: A New Paradigm in Eco- Friendly Piezoelectrics","authors":"K. Aditya Bhagavathi;Satish Bonam;Jose Joseph;Karri Trinadha Rao;Shiv Govind Singh;Siva Rama Krishna Vanjari","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3425812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3425812","url":null,"abstract":"Piezoelectric materials derived from biological sources are given greater consideration in the present era due to their advantages, such as biocompatibility, sustainability, and potential for tailoring properties through chemical modification and genetic engineering. Silk, a bio-piezopolymer, derived from the silk glands of various species of silkworms, is extensively studied for its piezoelectric properties and applications thereof. This article presents the development of a composite bio-piezopolymer, amalgamating the material properties of silk and the extracts taken from a tropical desert plant, aloe vera. A comprehensive material characterization protocol is embraced to assess the performance of the thin film formed from the silk-aloe vera (SAV) composite solution. In addition to an improvement in the piezoelectric characteristics, the composite film exhibited excellent surface uniformity and crystallinity, proving its potential for real-time applications. Pressure sensors were fabricated with SAV composite films and characterized using a custom-built test setup. The characterization results surpassed the performance achieved by pressure sensors fabricated using only silk thin film.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 7","pages":"292-299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142565488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Flexible Piezoelectric Polymer Membrane as Effective Tactile Sensor","authors":"Mantesh Kumari Yadav;Diwakar Padalia;Nitish Yadav","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3422258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3422258","url":null,"abstract":"We report a novel piezoelectric, flexible polymer sensor based on porous polyvinylideneflouride membrane. The piezo-membrane is prepared by the nonsolvent-induced phase separation method with water as nonsolvent. It exhibits open-circuit voltage (OCV) and short-circuit current up to 4.2 V and 1800 nA upon repetitive human finger tapping. The output performance of the piezo-membrane is correlated with the formation of electroactive polar \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$beta $ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000- and \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$gamma $ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000-phases in the polymer whose presence is confirmed by infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The sensor is able to detect signals generated by finger tapping on various surfaces and when attached to the feet of a walker. The novel strategy is a step forward to enable safe, sustainable, cost-effective, flexible, and durable tactile/pedal sensors.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 8","pages":"383-391"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142645504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Muhammad Wajahat;Abbas Z. Kouzani;Sui Yang Khoo;M. A. Parvez Mahmud
{"title":"Development of AI-Enabled Sign Language Predicting Glove Using 3-D Printed Triboelectric Sensors","authors":"Muhammad Wajahat;Abbas Z. Kouzani;Sui Yang Khoo;M. A. Parvez Mahmud","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3419078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3419078","url":null,"abstract":"Triboelectric energy harvesters and sensors are emerging as a desirable approach for energy harvesting and sensing. This study investigates several 3-D printed materials for the development of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and sensors. Our initial research focus is on establishing the most effective flexible 3-D printed materials for contact separation mode (CSM) TENGs. This includes a thorough examination of materials such as polyamide 6,6 (PA6,6), Vero clear, copper-coated polylactic acid (Cu-PLA), polycarbonate (PC), and acrylonitrile styrene acrylate (ASA) as well as several commercially available triboelectric negative materials. The best combination of 3-D printing (3DP) PA6,6 and Veroclear yields a maximum open circuit voltage (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$V_{mathrm {OC}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000) of 63 V and an instantaneous current of \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$0.8~mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000A. With extension based on this foundation, we investigated the use of polyamide PA6,6 as a triboelectric sensor for sign language interpretation. A novel approach is adopted by integrating 3DP PA6,6 strip with an aluminum electrode onto a glove which captures the subtle movements of fingers involved in sign language. Output generated by this TENG is processed through an Arduino microcontroller which is provided with the data for alphabets A-J with high consistency and repeatability. After detailed preprocessing of the data generated by sensors, convolutional neural network (CNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), and gated recurrent unit (GRU) machine learning algorithms are utilized to train the data. Comparison analysis of these algorithms displays the highest training and validation accuracy of 99% from LSTM. These results showcase the potential of flexible 3DP Triboelectric sensors in enhancing communication for the hearing impaired.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 6","pages":"266-273"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142021645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conformable Electronics With Conductive Silver Structures by Electrohydrodynamic Printing","authors":"Nadine Philippin;Ingo Kuehne;Gabriele Schrag","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3420263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3420263","url":null,"abstract":"Recent advances in research and fabrication of flexible, stretchable, or rather conformable electronics with printed conductive structures have enabled a wide range of applications. Various fields such as consumer electronics or wearable devices for health monitoring are affected by these achievements. Owing to gradually increasing demands on enhanced functionalities and an excellent deformability of such electronics, an investigation of appropriate hyperelastic materials and progressive manufacturing techniques are mandatory. In this article, a cost-efficient approach for fabrication of conformable electronics based on vacuum thermoforming with printed microscaled silver structures is presented. The patterns in form of conductive line arrays and meanders are realized by the emerging electrohydrodynamic printing (EHD) technique which constitutes a promising alternative to established additive technologies due to the applicability of various printing media as well as its high material compatibility. Moreover, hyperelastic material models comprising the Mooney-Rivlin, Ogden, neo-Hookean as well as the Yeoh model for description of stretchable thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) during deformation are contrasted and general capabilities for design optimization of conductive structures are derived by means of numerical simulations. Based on the EHD-printed metallic silver patterns on TPU with a subsequent transfer of the flat 100-\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 m thick matrix toward a 3D-shaped electronic device by thermoforming, first demonstrators with a degree of deformation up to 57% are realized.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 7","pages":"348-355"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142565579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MXene-Based Dual Network Hydrogel as Flexible Strain Sensor for Human Actions Recognition","authors":"Wei Wu;Yu-Ping Zeng;Bin Tian;Jing Liang","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3412875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3412875","url":null,"abstract":"Conductive hydrogels for smart wearable devices have attracted increasing attention due to their excellent flexibility, versatility, and outstanding biocompatibility. In order to prepare high-performance conductive hydrogels that can be applied to strain sensing, polyacrylamide was introduced into the polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-borax hydrogel to construct a double-network hydrogel (DNH), and Ti3C2Tx MXene and polydopamine were introduced into improve conductivity, realizing the preparation of MXene/polydopamine/PVA/polyacrylamide DNH (MXene-DNH). The effects of different mass ratios of PVA and acrylamide on the mechanical properties and electrical properties of hydrogels are systematically investigated. Among them, the MXene-DNH with the mass ratio of PVA: acrylamide =1:3.5 exhibits excellent mechanical and electrical performance, with elongation at break of 1420%, tensile strength of 249 kPa, and toughness of 1397.1 kJ/m3, electrical conductivity of 0.661 mS/cm. Moreover, the MXene-DNH can be used as strain sensor, and the sensor exhibits great sensing performance and possesses a wide strain working range (0%–965%), good sensitivity (0.38 in the 0%–100% strain range), and low hysteresis. Finally, the flexible strain sensor was applied to monitor multiple joint motions and recognize gestures, demonstrating it has broad application potential in the fields of portable wearable electronics and human-computer interaction.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 7","pages":"320-325"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142565573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spiderweb-Based Interconnects for Smart Textile Applications","authors":"Ananya Bhattacharjee;Ratul K. Baruah","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3410843","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3410843","url":null,"abstract":"Spiderwebs, or orbwebs, are naturally occurring structures that exhibit remarkable mechanical resilience and optimization. They are capable of withstanding multidirectional forces, even if one or more spiral or even radial lines are detached. Spiderweb (or fractal web) design holds significant interest in various fields such as flexible circuits, displays, smart textiles, and wearable healthcare. In this study, we analyze a three-order spiderweb inspired hexagonal interconnect architecture to assess its uniaxial stretchability, thermal stresses with electromagnetic heating of wire as well as contacts, and changes in passive parameter through bending of the structure through finite element analysis (FEA). Furthermore, we explore the impact of electrical load on the thermal stability of the structure with effect of applying voltage on the wire and the stress changes in the structure along with thermal effects on contacts with Multiphysics simulations through electromagnetic heating. We also introduced the concept of “filling ratio (FR)” for spiderweb geometries with even polygonal symmetry-based architectures with emphasis on efficient designing of the island-interconnect structure on large area structure. An analytical model has been developed to estimate alterations in resistance, self-capacitance, and self-inductance of the wires under uni/multiaxial stress. Both the FEA and the model exhibit close agreement for the passive electrical parameters at planar stretchability.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 6","pages":"274-281"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142021666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Flexible Vanadium Dioxide Films and Devices on Kapton Fabricated With Low-Temperature Atmospheric Oxidation of Vanadium","authors":"P. Ashok;Yogesh Singh Chauhan;Amit Verma","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3403795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3403795","url":null,"abstract":"Vanadium dioxide (VO2) is a functional material, attractive for many optical and electronic applications due to its reversible insulator to metal phase transition. The synthesis of VO2 often involves high-temperature processes originating from the complex nature of the V-O system. In this work, we report the synthesis of VO2 on a flexible Kapton substrate using a low-temperature atmospheric thermal oxidation process. The synthesized VO2 film shows ~3 orders of reversible resistance switching, which is among the highest reported on polyimide substrates without any buffer. Structural and surface properties of the peak resistance switching sample are characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). We also characterize the VO2 films under different bending radii and find stable resistance switching over 500 bending cycles. Long-wave infrared (LWIR) imaging of flexible VO2 film reveals emissivity variation due to VO2 phase transition. Using this flexible VO2, we fabricate two-terminal devices, which show stable voltage-induced reversible transition over 250 cycles. We observe stochastic variation in threshold voltages similar to VO2 films reported on rigid substrates and with potential applications in true-random number generators. By coupling these flexible VO2 devices to a MOSFET, we demonstrate a steep switching phase-field effect transistor (Phase-FET) with a sub-Boltzmann subthreshold slope (SS) of 29 mV/decade at room temperature. This demonstration of flexible VO2 synthesis and devices can open possibilities for several flexible VO2-based device applications.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 8","pages":"368-373"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142645473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Alkali Metal Doping on Sol–Gel-Derived Copper Oxide for Performance Enhancement of Thin-Film Transistors","authors":"Seokhyeon Baek;Jun-Gyu Choi;Sungjun Park","doi":"10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3407687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/JFLEX.2024.3407687","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, copper oxide (CuxO) has emerged as a promising p-type oxide semiconductor owing to its high Hall mobility. However, its inherent drawbacks, such as the substantial native defects and uncontrolled stoichiometry, limit its application in thin-film transistors (TFTs) for energy-efficient complementary devices. In this study, we employ the sol-gel synthetic approach for facile doping to investigate the doping effects of alkali metals (Li, Na, and K) on the electrical performance of CuxO TFTs. The results demonstrate that doping, particularly with lithium (Li), significantly improves the electrical performance of CuxO TFTs. The similarity in ionic radius facilitates efficient hole transport, which considerably enhances the field-effect mobility (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$4.7times 10^{-3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 cm2/Vs), subthreshold swing (SS) (8.3 V/dec), and on-off current ratio (~104) with minimized hysteresis. The structural analysis of the Li-doped CuxO films using X-ray diffraction (XRD) does not exhibit any significant lattice distortion and an increase in the grain size implies the reduction of trap sites. Consequently, the successful fabrication of Li-doped CuxO TFTs on polyimide substrates, using ZrOx as a gate dielectric layer, demonstrates its compatibility with flexible electronics. This approach enhances the electrical performance of p-type CuxO TFTs and presents a scalable and efficient pathway for the development of advanced TFT technology in flexible electronics.","PeriodicalId":100623,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics","volume":"3 6","pages":"228-233"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142021658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}