Electronic Skin Has A Strong Future Stretching Ahead || #ElectronicSkin

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A material that mimics human skin in strength, stretchability and sensitivity could be used to collect biological data in real time.

The ideal e-skin will mimic the many natural functions of human skin, such as sensing temperature and touch, accurately and in real time — KAUST postdoc Yichen Cai

However, making suitably flexible electronics that can perform such delicate tasks while also enduring the bumps and scrapes of everyday life is challenging, and each material involved must be carefully engineered.

Most e-skins are made by layering an active nanomaterial (the sensor) on a stretchy surface that attaches to human skin.

However, the connection between these layers is often too weak, which reduces the durability and sensitivity of the material; alternatively, if it is too strong, flexibility becomes limited, making it more likely to crack and break the circuit.

The emergence of 2-D sensors has accelerated efforts to integrate these atomically thin, mechanically strong materials into functional, durable artificial skins.

A team led by Cai and colleague Jie Shen has now created a durable e-skin using a hydrogel reinforced with silica nanoparticles as a strong and stretchy substrate and a 2-D titanium carbide MXene as the sensing layer, bound together with highly conductive nanowires.

Hydrogels are more than 70 percent water, making them very compatible with human skin tissues — Shen

By prestretching the hydrogel in all directions, applying a layer of nanowires, and then carefully controlling its release, the researchers created conductive pathways to the sensor layer that remained intact even when the material was stretched to 28 times its original size.

"It is a striking achievement for an e-skin to maintain toughness after repeated use," says Shen, "which mimics the elasticity and rapid recovery of human skin."

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