A new proof of concept “opens the path to ultra-high resolution fingerprint sensors,” according to Leti project manager Antoine Viana.
Issued in a statement, Viana’s commentary refers to PiezoMAT, a European cross-industry collaboration aimed at exploring how piezoelectric zinc-oxide nanowires fostered on a silicon chip can be used to create a pressure-based fingerprint sensor that can capture images in twice as much detail as the current FBI standard. Leti, a branch of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, spearheaded the project in collaboration with other government agencies, academic institutions like Germany’s Universität Leipzig, and major private companies including France’s OT-Morpho, to establish a newly announced proof of concept that can produce fingerprint scans at 1,000 dots per inch.
Commenting further on the project, Viana said that the technology will ultimately “be able to reach resolution much higher than 1,000 DPI,” adding that it “holds promise for significant improvement in both security and identification applications.”
The piezoelectric nanowire matrices project represents a considerable investment on the part of the European Commission in the Seventh Framework Program, which provided €2.9 million in backing. It isn’t yet clear what the next phase of the project could entail, but Leti’s statement asserts, “Long-term development will pursue full electronics integration for optimal sensor resolution.”
—
September 5, 2017 – by Alex Perala
Follow Us