High-resolution Patterning and Functionalization of Organic Devices for Sensory-augmented Electronics

Abstract

Augmented sensory technologies, which mimic biological sense functions, possess various form factors while also surpassing human sensory abilities or amplifying cognitive capabilities, enabling a new interface that maximizes human-machine interaction. These technologies are actively applied across all aspects of everyday life, including education, industry, gaming, and leisure. Particularly, vision and tactility, which accommodate vast amounts of information from the external environment and effectively perceive various kinds of sensations, are vigorously researched in the fields of immersive content technology, haptic electronics, and intelligent artificial prosthetics. This thesis focuses on the limitations of current organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and organic artificial tactile nerve technologies within immersive virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) and artificial neural fields, introducing material and device designs that can fundamentally overcome these challenges. Despite their excellent luminous characteristics, current OLEDs face difficulties in effectively applying to high-density pixel display-demanding VR/AR devices due to the low patterning resolution of existing organic light-emitting materials. Therefore, there is a pressing need for organic light-emitting materials and patterning process designs capable of high-resolution RGB pixelation. Additionally, existing organic artificial tactile nerve technologies require complex circuit structures which are composed of sensors, signal transmitters, and synaptic devices, and have extremely low tactile memory capabilities, necessitating the development of new artificial neural devices. This thesis aims to cover material design strategies that can essentially solve these issues, up to the practical application of developed vision and tactile augmented devices. This thesis is organized into four chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of sensory augmentation technology, OLEDs, and organic artificial tactile nerves. Chapter 2 introduces the design of silicon-incorporated organic light-emitting materials suitable for photolithography coupled with reactive ion etching process, enabling the implementation of high-density RGB pixels. Chapter 3 discusses the development of organic artificial tactile nerves that can simultaneously achieve high-sensitive tactile perception and tactile memory augmentation within a single device by constructing ion trap and release dynamics. Furthermore, by integrating the developed artificial tactile nerve with a robotic operating circuit, we demonstrate a robot system capable of performing specific actions based on augmented tactile memory, thereby verifying the practical application and effectiveness of tactile augmented artificial neural devices.