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Features: March 4, 2002
Sensitive Artificial Skin
A research team at Rensselaer has developed
a prototype artificial skin that will ultimately sense light,
heat, touch, and damage, just as human skin does. The skin
is built using nanostructured films less than a micron in
depth.
Shur says he envisions the artificial
skin could be used on robots working in unstructured
environments such as space, in prosthetic devices, and
for the military.
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It was created by depositing semiconductor
films and fabricating devices on objects of arbitrary shapes
made from materials such as ceramics, glass, stretchable
cloth, and fibers. On these films the researchers fabricated
photo-conducting sensors, solar cells, and other devices.
Michael Shur, the Patricia W. and Sheldon
Roberts '48 Professor of Solid State Electronics, says the
film's nanocrystalline structure would be stronger and more
flexible than conventional semiconductor materials.
Shur says he envisions the artificial skin
could be used on robots working in unstructured environments
such as space, in prosthetic devices, and for the military.
A nationally recognized expert in this field,
Shur co-chaired a workshop on sensitive skin sponsored by
the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Shur is working with Remis Gaska, associate
research professor, and Sergei Rumyantsev, visiting scientist
from A.F. Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology in Russia,
to develop large-area sensor and detector arrays fabricated
on flexible substrates.
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