Organic Electronic Classifiers for Sensing

TL;DR

This paper reviews nine years of research on organic electronic classifiers that integrate sensing and recognition functionalities, aiming to bridge sensors and biological senses in environmental detection.

Contribution

It introduces a generic concept for detection using organic semiconductors, combining sensing and recognition in a novel way for environmental and chemical detection.

Findings

Development of chemical detectors using conducting polymers

Design of classifiers exploiting organic semiconductor functionalities

Enhanced sensing devices with broadened receptive fields

Abstract

This monograph describes nine years of research carried out at the Institute for Electronics, Micro-electronics and Nanotechnologies (IEMN), developed around defining a generic concept for detection, filling a void between metrological sensors and biological senses, sensing an environment's qualities along with their measurable properties in information generation technologies. The first chapter introduces fundamental notions of recognition for complex environments, such as for their chemistry, for which organic semiconductors can embed two new functionalities in consumer electronics. The second and third chapters mostly summarize contributions to the state-of-the-art literature on these matters: in the second chapter, on studying conducting polymers as both chemical detectors and conductimetric transducers, and the third chapter, on studying electropolymerization sensitivity to conceptualize evolutionary electronics. The fourth chapter presents several results on the conception of several "classifiers" exploiting both functionalities: in tasks aiming at integrating different sensitivities at a very small scale, at broadening sensing devices' receptive fields based on experience, and at physically engraving the experience data in a sensing hardware. Along with this monograph are also associated four appendices, summarizing different elements related to the context of this research.