Advances in Bio-Inspired Sensing: Materials and Devices

Dear Colleagues,

In modern society, sensors are ubiquitous. The recent advances in fields like autonomous driving, Internet of Things, or advanced robotics, drive a high demand to develop novel sensor materials and devices. Important research directions in this respect are autonomous sensing, energy efficient sensing, reduction of data streaming demands, and multi-sensor networks.

Biological systems based on highly parallel signal detection, processing, and encoding at/near the sensor (based on neurons) routinely outperform even the most modern conventional sensor devices. The outstanding performance and robustness of sensors of biological origin open the vast and promising research area of bio-inspired sensing, which aims at the development of efficient sensor materials and devices.

Bio-inspired materials and sensors have broad application prospects which range from disease diagnosis, control and therapy, bioengineering process control, agriculture and food security, battery health monitoring to environmental quality monitoring and beyond.

The design of bio-inspired sensors requires a deep understanding of the interplay between morphology, microstructure, and composition of stimulus-responsive materials as well as their sensing functionality. For the translation of such materials into a bio-inspired sensor device, aspects regarding the read out of the material’s response as well as signal processing are of fundamental importance. In particular, bio-inspired sensing attempts to identify and understand relevant paradigms in sensors of biological origin and to adapt these paradigms to develop efficient sensor materials and devices. Accordingly, bio-inspired sensing is a broad and interdisciplinary field that brings together researchers from biology, neuroscience, electrical engineering, material science and beyond.

For this Special Issue, we encourage you to contribute original research papers that focus on all aspects related to bio-inspired sensing.

Prof. Hermann Kohlstedt
Dr. Claudia Lenk
Dr. Alexander Vahl
Prof. Dr. Sung Kwon Cho
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Bio-inspired circuits and systems
• Memristive devices
• Thin films
• Nanocomposites
• MEMS/NEMS
• Stimulus-responsive materials
• Neuromorphic engineering
• Flexible sensors for robotics
• Adaptive sensing
• Event-based sensing
• Sparse sensing