Healthcare practitioners may one day be able to physically screen for breast cancer using pressure-sensitive rubber gloves to detect tumours, owing to a transparent, bendable and sensitive pressure sensor newly developed by Japanese and American teams under the leadership of the University of Tokyo. Conventional pressure sensors are flexible enough to fit to soft surfaces such as human skin, but they cannot measure pressure changes accurately once they are twisted or wrinkled, making them unsuitable for use on complex and moving surfaces.
With the concept series “Lumen”, the folding carton manufacturer rlc packaging group, which is based in Hanover, Germany, presents new packaging ideas that connect lighting effects with special constructions. Printed electronics is used to underline the special forms and colours, as well as individual details of the packaging.
FlexEnable, a leading developer of flexible organic electronics based in Cambridge, UK, and the French company ISORG, specialised in organic photodetectors and large-area image sensors, have presented the world’s first large-area flexible fingerprint sensor on plastic designed for biometric applications. With an 8.6 cm x 8.6 cm active area, 84µm pitch (78µm pixel size with 6µm spacing) and 1024 x 1024 = 1048576 pixel resolution, this flexible sensor is only 0.3 mm thick and can operate in visible and near infra-red up to wavelengths of 900nm.
