About the project
The challenges to be addressed in FERROPLAST project are:
- To mitigate the lack of an empirical rule for designing PICs with high pyro/ piezoelectric response
- To obtain crystal phase purity in PIC thin films
- To maintain ‘crystallinity’ in thin films to realize molecular pyro/ piezoelectricity’
Objectives
Outcomes
Background
Humanoid robots demonstrate high potential for hospital works and personal assistance. In late 2020, humanoid robots were successfully used in Japan to support nursing staffs in taking care of COVID-19 patients. This created a significant boost in the world-wide market of robotic hardware over the last two years.This can be boosted further by supporting the current development in artificial intelligence for robots with the ability to sense like a human when used as personal assistant and healthcare provider. A robotic skin that is able to emulate the multi-sensor ability of human
skin, will open for ‘touch’ sensitivity for robots and make them competent to perceive the world like a human.
In addition to tactile stimuli processing, the robotic (electronic) skin materials must have the structural features of ‘dermal’ layer (sensitive upper layer) of human skin:
(a) fabricability to large area,
b) shape adaptiveness and elasticity to adjust
with human like robotic motion
The ideal electronic skin material must be inexpensive, sensitive to both the static and
dynamic pressure (i.e. movement of objects) and temperature (temperature variation) stimuli like human skin.
Flexible ferroelectric materials can be fabricated into multi-sensor electronic skin with inherent pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties, resulting in fast response to both static and dynamic stimuli, shape adaptiveness and selfpowering (no external electric power) features. Plastic ionic crystals (PICs) are the emerging class of ‘molecular’
ferroelectric materials that can go beyond the state of art of electronic skin materials
Financing
The Ferroplast project is financed by the European Union.
Project duration
2023-2025