Guest Editorial Special Issue on Flexible Sensors and ... - IEEE Xplore

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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 13, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2013

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Flexible Sensors and Sensing Systems

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PPLICATIONS of sensors and sensing systems have been limited by the rigidity of the substrates that these sensors have been built upon and the commonly available packaging techniques. This special issue focuses on the sensors and sensing systems having features like flexibility, bendability, conformability, stretchability, and presence over large areas and 3D surfaces. Like conventional sensors, flexible sensors are also used to measure parameters and agents like pH, temperature, humidity, force, gasses, velocity, flow etc. In addition, they possess the ability to bend. This requires special front-end processing techniques compatible with the flexible materials that these sensors are made of. Moreover, the encapsulation, packaging, and interconnection technologies- back-end processing - need to allow a significant amount of elasticity and suppleness to maintain the flexibility of the sensors without hindering their basic functionality. Thus, not only new sensing devices, but a completely new fabrication paradigm is conceived. In response to the call for papers for this special issue, 114 manuscripts were received. Of those, 39 were found not to fit to the scope of the special issue and were separated to be handled by the permanent editors of the Journal. The peer review process resulted in 29 innovative manuscripts to be published here submitted from over 45 institutions, with a few trailing manuscripts to be published at a later issue due to time constraints. Of the work presented here, nine papers describe sensors for health and medical applications. Five papers detail sensors for the general fields of environmental and structural health monitoring. Four are on robotic applications. Although majority of the manuscripts focus on a single sensing function such as fluidic flow, force, pH, temperature or presence of a specific gas, four papers present multifunctional flexible sensors. There is still plenty more to do. Flexible sensors still have a long way to go to catch-up to the conventional semiconductor technology for fabrication process-flow streamlining, standard modeling and simulation software packages, and in general the cost of manufacturing. Integration issues create a special opportunity to take advantage of the developing flexible electronics for power and read-out circuitry. These are exciting times for those who work on sensors. The guest editors would like to thank the authors who submitted their work to the special issue. We are also grateful to the hundreds of expert reviewers without whom the high

quality of the presented work would not have been possible. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to S ENSORS J OURNAL staff.

Z EYNEP Ç ELIK -B UTLER, Guest Editor Electrical Engineering Department University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX 76019 USA [email protected]

R AVINDER S. DAHIYA, Guest Editor Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering School of Engineering, University of Glasgow Glasgow, G12 8QQ, U.K. [email protected]

M ANUEL Q UEVEDO -L OPEZ, Guest Editor Materials Science and Engineering University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX 75080 USA [email protected]

YONG X U, Guest Editor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Wayne State University Detroit, MI 48202 USA [email protected]

S IGURD WAGNER, Guest Editor Department of Electrical Engineering Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 USA [email protected]

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2013.2279409 1530-437X © 2013 IEEE


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Zeynep Çelik-Butler (F’12) is a Professor of electrical engineering and the Director of the Nanotechnology Research and Education Center, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA. She received dual B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and physics from Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA, in 1984 and 1987, respectively. She served on various IEEE committees, including the IEEE-IEDM Technical Committee from 1988 to 1989, EDS Technical Committee on Electronic Materials from 1998 to 2001, EDS National Membership Committee from 1998 to 2006, and EDS Education Awards Committee from 2009 to 2011; she was also a Vice-Chair from 2006 to 2009 and Chair in 2010 of the EDS North America West Regions/Chapters Subcommittee. She was a Distinguished Lecturer for EDS from 1998 to 2010. She is currently the Chair for EDS Chapter of Dallas and an Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON E LECTRON D EVICES. Prof. Çelik-Butler has received several awards, including the IEEE-Dallas Section Electron Devices Society Outstanding Service Awards in 1995 and 1997, the IEEE-Electron Devices Society Service Recognition Award in 1995 and 2009, and the IEEE-Electron Devices Society Distinguished Lecturer Appreciation Award in 2006. Dr. Çelik-Butler is a life member of Eta Kappa Nu and a member of the American Physical Society. She has worked on flexible sensors for two decades and is the author of over 170 journal and conference papers.

Ravinder S. Dahiya (SM’12) is a Senior Lecturer with the Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering Research Division, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, U.K. He received the B.Tech (Hons.) degree in electrical engineering from Kurukshetra University, Haryana, India, in 1999, the M.Tech. degree from IIT Delhi, Delhi, India, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in humanoid technologies from the Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, and University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy, in 2009. From 2001 to 2008, he was a Lecturer at NSIT Delhi, Delhi, and a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, from 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2013, he was a Researcher (Marie Curie Fellow) at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy. Since 2013, he has been a Visiting Researcher with the Centre for Large Area Electronics, Electrical Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K. His research interests include flexible electronics, tactile sensing, and electronic skin. He is the author of Robotic Tactile Sensing – Technologies and System (Springer). He has published more than 80 scientific papers and holds one patent. He has worked on many international projects and is currently coordinating a European Commission-funded collaborative project. He was awarded with the University Gold Medal in 1999. He received the Best Paper Award on two occasions, at IEEE-sponsored national and international conferences, in 1998 and 2007, respectively. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS (TRO) and was a Guest Editor of the IEEE TRO Special Issue on Robotic Sense of Touch. He is representing the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in the AdCom of the IEEE Sensor Council.

Manuel Quevedo-Lopez (M’02) is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA. He received the Ph.D. degree in materials science from The University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA, in 2002. In 2002, he joined the Texas Instruments (TI) Silicon Technology Development Group as a Technical Staff Member. While at Texas Instruments, he was appointed a SEMATECH Assignee from 2004 to 2006. At TI and SEMATECH, he worked extensively in advanced gate stack materials for Si-based technology. In 2007, he joined the University of Texas at Dallas as a Research Professor and he was appointed as an Associate Professor at the Materials Science and Engineering Department, Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, in 2010. Prof. Quevedo has authored or co-authored over 130 publications in peer-reviewed journals and holds ten U.S. patents. He is a member of the Materials Research Society and AVS. His interests include materials and devices for flexible electronics, flexible non-volatile memory, large area sensors and novel nanostructured semiconductor, dielectrics, and contacts for TFT and energy applications.

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Yong Xu (SM’12) is an Associate Professor of electrical and computer engineering with Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA. He received the B.S. degree in electronics engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. He has worked on flexible sensor skins, intelligent textiles, wearable sensors, and stretchable/foldable devices in the last decade and has invented a number of novel technologies. Dr. Xu has authored or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed scientific articles and received/filed ten patent applications based on his original research discoveries. He has been invited to serve as the reviewer or panelist by many funding agencies, such as National Science Foundation, National Institute of Justice in the USA, and research agencies in other countries. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his work on flexible and wearable sensors in 2008.

Sigurd Wagner (LF’11) is a Professor of electrical engineering with Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. He has been working on devices, processes, and materials for large-area electronics, which is also called macroelectronics or giant electronics. Macroelectronics includes flat panel displays, rigid, flexible or foldable, electronics shaped to cover irregular surfaces, electronic skin and e-textiles. He is the author of over 450 publications and coinventor in 13 U.S. patents.