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Synthetic insecticides are widely used against plant pest insects to protect the crops. However, many insecticides have poor selectivity and are toxic also to beneficial insects, animals, and humans. In addition, insecticide residues can remain on fruits for many days, jeopardizing food safety. For these reasons, a reusable, low‐cost electronic trap that can attract, detect, and identify, but attack only the pest while leaving beneficial insects unharmed could provide a sustainable, nature‐friendly replacement. Here, for the first time, research results are presented suggesting the great potential and compatibility of organic electronic devices and technologies with pest management. Electrical characterizations confirm that an insect's body has relatively high dielectric permittivity. Adaptive memcapacitor circuits can track the impedance change for insect detection. Other experiments show that printed polymer piezoelectric transducers on a plastic substrate can collect information about the weight and activity of insects for identification. The breakdown voltage of most insects´ integument is measured to be <200 V. Long channel organic transistors easily work at such high voltages while being safe to touch for humans thanks to their inherent low current. This feasibility study paves the way for the future development of organic electronics for physical pest control and biodiversity protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a growing number of electronic devices surrounding our daily life, it becomes increasingly important to create solutions for clear and simple communication and interaction at the human machine interface (HMI). Haptic feedback solutions play an important role as they give a clear direct link and response to the user. This work demonstrates multifunctional haptic feedback devices based on fully printed piezoelectric transducers realized with functional polymers on thin paper substrate. The devices are flexible; lightweight and show very high out-of-plane deflection of 213 µm at a moderate driving voltage of 50 Vrms (root mean square) achieved by an innovative multilayer design with up to five individually controllable active layers. The device creates a very clear haptic sensation to the human skin with a blocking force of 0.6 N at the resonance frequency of 320 Hz, which is located in the most sensitive range of the human fingertip. Additionally the transducer generates audible information above two kilohertz with a remarkable high sound pressure level. Thus the paper-based approach can be used for interactive displays in combination with touch sensation; sound and color prints. The work gives insights into the manufacturing process; the electrical characteristics; and an in-depth analysis of the 3D deflection of the device under variable conditions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, piezoelectric transducers consisting of a P(VDF-TrFE) layer with either silver or PEDOT:PSS screen-printed electrodes are studied. The influence of electrodes on the dielectric and electroacoustic properties are studied in dielectric-spectroscopy and ferroelectric-hysteresis measurements. Only when both the bottom and the top electrodes are made of silver, the typical dielectric relaxation of the P(VDF-TrFE) layer is clearly observed. When one or two of the electrodes are of PEDOT:PSS, a Debye-like relaxation is present. Compared with silver electrodes, PEDOT:PSS electrodes allow for moderate self-healing. Consequently, samples with bottom and top PEDOT:PSS electrodes can be poled to saturation, while samples with silver electrodes can hardly be poled to saturation due to destructive electric breakdown. Acoustic transducer measurements show that silver electrodes facilitate higher and broader frequency operation, while PEDOT:PSS electrodes bring slightly lower total harmonic distortion. Overall, the acoustic performance shows no significant deviations between differently electroded samples so that silver electrodes do not offer any advantages for the transducers studied here due to their much higher tendency for destructive electric breakdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All-polymer, semi-transparent, three-layer-dielectric (3L) organic field effect transistors (OFETs) are fabricated on polyethylene terephthalate plastic substrate, using high-throughput printing techniques. Analog small-signal characteristics of the 3L OFET are presented and are compared against the previous version of this technology, which was based on a single-layer dielectric and a metal gate electrode. The 3L transistor withstands 50 V, can continuously drive 50 μA/mm, reaches an excellent intrinsic-gain ( A v0 ) of 43 dB, an equivalent mobility of 0.85 cm 2 /V, and a transit frequency ( f T ) of 68 kHz, well suited for applications such as driving printed piezoelectric loudspeakers and flexible audio systems. The effects of the relaxor-ferroelectric high-k layer in the 3L stack on the gate capacitance, g m , and A v0 are measured in the frequency domain. In addition, it is observed that PEDOT:PSS makes a better interface with polymer dielectric comparing to copper particle ink. Five-hour small- and large-signal bias stress tests are performed. A novel direct A v0 measurement technique, and an improved transconductance extraction method are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Fully mass printed, flexible and truly polymeric organic field effect transistors consisting of a three layer dielectric made of CYTOP (low-k), PVA (intermediate) and P(VDF-TrFE-CTFE)(high-k) are introduced. Gravure-, flexo-and screen printing were selected as highly productive manufacturing technologies. These OFETs work at strongly reduced voltages and show high field effect mobility (µ = 0.2 cm2/Vs) and remarkable good bias stress stability at very high current density (50 µA/mm). Fully printed OFETs are used for the realization of ring oscillators working in the kHz regime at reduced supply voltage (10 V). In combination with printed fully polymeric piezoelectric loudspeakers, this work shows for the first time fully printed flexible audio systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2015, 53, 1409-1415 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piezoelectric polymer loudspeakers have advantages like lightweight, flexibility, simple structure, and small volume, which make them favorable for a variety of applications. Herein, such loudspeakers are fabricated by screen printing the bottom and top electrodes (poly(3,4‐ethylene‐dioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate), PEDOT:PSS) as well as the piezoelectric polymer layer (poly(vinylidene fluoride‐trifluoroethylene), P(VDF‐TrFE)), in between on paper substrates. The dielectric properties of the printed loudspeakers are studied with dielectric spectroscopy. Thanks to the self‐healing process during poling, the samples are successfully poled to saturation in spite of their large area of up to 300 cm2. The dependence of the acoustic output on remanent polarization and the active area of the piezoelectric layer is investigated. A sound pressure level (SPL) of about 91 dB at a distance of 1 m is obtained with array samples of five rectangular units (10 × 6 cm2 in area each). In particular, samples with two loudspeaker arrays printed, respectively, on both surfaces of the paper substrates are prepared, and a further increase of 6 dB in SPL is achieved when the two loudspeakers are driven in phase. The results not only deepen the understanding of fully printed piezoelectric polymer loudspeakers but also realize an SPL much higher than that reported in previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]