PYCSEL, A New Thermal Fingerprint Sensor

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

During the EAB Research Projects Conference, PYCSEL project will participate both presenting and demonstrating the innovative thermal biometric sensor technology to the Biometric community.

The European funded PYCSEL (PYroelectric Conformable SEnsor matrix for Large area applications in security and safety) project has been previously shown in the OE-A Competition. This competition was held during the LOPEC event at Messe München convention center in Munich during the days 19th to 21st March 2019.

LOPEC is the leading trade fair and one of the most important conferences for the printed electronics industry. In this event, the OE-A (Organic and Printed Electronics Association) celebrated a competition  where engineers, scientists and companies have presented future applications, which incorporate organic and printed electronics.

PYCSEL (PYroelectric Conformable SEnsor matrix for Large area applications in security and safety) Project was awarded as the Best Publicly-funded Project Demonstrator.

PYCSEL sensor is the first world fingerprint sensor that combines printed pyroelectric PVDF-based layers above an IGZO-TFT active matrix on a flexible plastic foil. PYCSEL is an active thermal fingerprint sensor: ridges are touching the pixels, pumping heat, creating a temperature difference with valleys, which are not in touch with the sensor. The demonstrator is a one-finger sensor, 256x256 pixels @ 500 ppi. It has produced its first images with the demo shown in the OE-A competition, and biometric experts of the PYCSEL consortium are now testing its performance.

The award obtained in the OE-A competition shows the importance of the use of printed electronics in the biometric world, as this new sensor provides some features, which make it suitable for several applications such as smartcards, automotive scenarios, such as steering wheels or gears, etc., providing a solution that is not bulky with high resolution and low cost.

This initial 256x256 pixel sensor is a step demonstrating the technology capability. The final objective of the project is a 4 finger slap sensor with 1500x1600 pixels (active area of 75 x 80 mm2).

PYCSEL project is a European H2020 funded project, which is devoted to developing a new fingerprint sensor, using TOLAE (Thin, Organic and Large Area Electronics) technology. The project started on January 1st 2017, coordinated by CEA and the consortium is formed by key partners in the different areas covered in the project: from specialized electronic partners such as Irlynx (France), imec (Belgium), Nederlandse Organisatie Voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek TNO (the Netherlands) and Holst Centre (the Netherlands), systems designers as Bioage SRL (Italy) to biometric industry leader as IDEMIA (France) or Universidad Carlos III Madrid and final users as Autoliv (Sweden).

In the following video, some features of the sensor can be observed: