Contact Printed Nanowires for Next-Generation Electronic Skin

Date: 2024/12/19 - 2024/12/19

Academic Seminar: Contact Printed Nanowires for Next-Generation Electronic Skin

Speaker: Fengyuan Liu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Northeastern University

Time: 09:00 - 10:00, December, 19, 2024 (Beijing Time)

Location: Room 454, JI Long Bin Building

Abstract

Electronic skin (e-skin) is a fast-emerging soft system to provide tactile sensations like our own skin. However, most of the prototypes developed today focus on the integration of various sensors on flexible substrates and the research into the computing capabilities of e-skin is just starting to gain momentum. This talk presents how contact printed nanowires can be employed to develop the next-generation e-skin that can sense and perceive locally.  It covers five aspects: 1) the development of a home-made setup for automated and highly controlled nanowire contact printing; 2) the experimental study that optimizes the ZnO nanowire synthesis and the further field-effect transistor (FET) fabrication; 3) the theoretical study that predicts the batch distribution (uniformity) of the field-effect transistor arrays; 4) its use as artificial synapses for Hebbian-like learning in robotics and the demonstration of other biological phenomenon including long- and short-term memory and “use and disuse” theory; and 5) the initial circuit development attempt for future neuromorphic hardware realization.

Biography

Dr. Fengyuan Liu obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Nanjing University in 2012 and 2015, respectively, and received his Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Glasgow in 2020. He was awarded the Lord Kelvin and Adam Smith (LKAS) PhD scholarships and the University Principal's Mobility scheme from the University of Glasgow, and was awarded Marie Curie Fellowship in 2023. He is currently a Marie Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy, and Northeastern University in the United States, where he leads the project: "Neuro-encoded Electronic Skin (NEUCODES)." Additionally, he serves as the researcher Co-I on the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)-funded project "Green Optimized Printed Integrated Circuits (GEOPIC)."