Dual-mode Electronic Skin With Integrated Tactile Sensing And Visualized Injury Warning

Biomimetic electronic skin(e-skin)has attracts much attention in the fields of artificial prosthetics and smart robots.Biological skin not only has powerful tactile sensory function,but also has pain feedback functions.However,most traditional tactile sensors based on single response mode for pressure sensing suffer from a rapid decrease in sensitivity with the increase of pressure.Their highly sensitive range covers a narrow pressure range and has a weak response to the injurious high pressures.In order to solve this problem,this article has developed a dual-mode e-skin,which inspired by the phenomenon that the "Alarm Jellyfish" emits strong light when it is injured.The e-skin is able to quantify and map the static and dynamic pressures by combining electrical and optical responses.It imitates the function of mechanoreceptors and nociceptors in biological skin and realize a reliable perception to wide range of pressure.With properties of stretchability and mechanical stability,it may find a wide range of applications in artificial intelligence and medicine.The main content and significance of this article are as follows:(1)The liquid nitrogen-assisted transfer method is proposed for the first time and Ag nanowire stretchable transparent electrode is successfully fabricated.Ag nanowire network is very stable on the surface of elastomer.Such a composite electrode has both low resistance and high transmittance,and can withstand great bending and tensile deformation.Compared with other types of stretchable electrodes,it has the advantages of simple production and good stability.(2)The sandwich-structured e-skin that integrates capacitive sensing and electroluminescence is fabricated.Due to their complementary highly sensitive response range,e-skin has a wide detection range of pressure,as well as low limit of detection,fast response rate and excellent stability.In particular,the phenomenon of emitting bright light under high pressure give the e-skin an “optical alarm” function,showing great potential for application in human–machine interfaces.(3)Combining laser-etching method and liquid nitrogen-assisted transfer method,a pattern-type stretchable electrode is fabricated.Further,a dual-mode e-skin with a 6 × 6 pixel array is fabricated.Such a large-area stretchable e-skin simultaneously has capacitive pressure addressing function and visualized pressure mapping function,and has potential applications in intelligent robots,artificial prosthetics and other fields.