Liquid-metal-based Dynamic Thermoregulating And Self-Powered Electronic Skin

Electronic skin is a new kind of human-machine interface technology,which can realize seamless connection between the human and machine.It has great application prospects in health monitoring,personal electronics and intelligent robots in the future.Recently,the biosimulation of human skin and biological skin has become an important source of inspiration for the development of new multi-functional electronic skin.Human skin is the largest sensing organ of human beings.It can feel pressure,temperature,humidity and so on.In the process of research and development,electronic skin should not only have the tactile perception and extension function similar to human skin,but also have the comfort similar to human skin.Thermoregulation is one of the important functions of human skin.Human skin transmits information of supercooling or overheating to thermoregulation center through its surface temperature sensor,so that the thermoregulation center controls blood vessels and sweat glands to regulate human body temperature.Therefore,thermoregulation function also needs to be considered in the development of electronic skin.At present,the thermal management methods of electronic skin mainly use porous structure or thermal insulation materials.However,these traditional thermal management methods can only accelerate the skin heat dissipation or isolate the external heat transfer,which can not accurately maintain the human skin temperature in its comfortable temperature range.In contrast,the temperature regulation of human skin is based on the surrounding temperature Active dynamic regulation process.Therefore,it is necessary to develop a dynamic thermal management electronic skin similar to human skin.In this paper,the liquid metal based electronic skin is made of gallium,indium and tin.The phase transition temperature of the liquid metal is within the comfortable temperature range of human skin,and the silicone elastomer with good biocompatibility is used as the packaging material.An electronic skin with the functions of thermal management,self-powered power supply and intelligent control is prepared,and its thermal management ability and power transmission performance are analyzed research on the performance of the product.The main research contents are as follows:By controlling the melting point of liquid metal within the comfortable temperature range of human skin,we have developed a dynamic thermal management and self-powered electronic skin with liquid metal as phase change material.Compared with the traditional electronic skin temperature regulation method,the electronic skin composed of liquid metal can absorb or release heat through phase change in the face of supercooled or overheated environment Release heat to extend the duration of comfortable temperature of human skin.Combined with the principle of friction nano generator,the dynamic thermal management electronic skin can also be used as a selfpowered energy collection device.By collecting the mechanical energy generated by human activities,the dynamic temperature control electronic skin is connected with the energy management system,so as to realize the function of charging the smart hand ring.Based on the self-powered dynamic thermal management electronic skin,an intelligent dial-up communication system is further developed.By simulating the tactile sensing function of human skin,the dynamic thermal management electronic skin is combined with the dialing key of mobile phone,and the electronic skin is attached to the human skin and connected with the circuit management and control system to realize the function of dialing mobile phone.In this study,the concept of dynamic thermal management is introduced into electronic skin by using the phase transition of liquid metal,which provides a new direction for improving the comfort of electronic skin.This kind of dynamic electronic skin with thermal management,selfpowered power supply and intelligent control functions can open up a new research direction for the development of electronic skin.