A flexible artificial intrinsic-synaptic tactile sensory organ

Abstract

Imbuing bio-inspired sensory devices with intelligent functions of human sensory organs has been limited by challenges in emulating the preprocessing abilities of sensory organs such as reception, filtering, adaptation, and sensory memory at the device level itself. Merkel cells, which is a part of tactile sensory organs, form synapse-like connections with afferent neuron terminals referred to as Merkel cell-neurite complexes. Here, inspired by structure and intelligent functions of Merkel cell-neurite complexes, we report a flexible, artificial, intrinsic-synaptic tactile sensory organ that mimics synapse-like connections using an organic synaptic transistor with ferroelectric nanocomposite gate dielectric of barium titanate nanoparticles and poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene). Modulation of the post-synaptic current of the device induced by ferroelectric dipole switching due to triboelectric-capacitive coupling under finger touch allowed reception and slow adaptation. Modulation of synaptic weight by varying the nanocomposite composition of gate dielectric layer enabled tuning of filtering and sensory memory functions.

Emulating the preprocessing abilities of sensory organs and sensory memory at the device level remains a challenge. Here, the authors demonstrate a flexible tactile sensor based on barium titanate nanoparticles in ferroelectric nanocomposite capable of emulating filtering and sensory memory functions.