Skin-Integrated, Stretchable Electronic Skin for Human Motion Capturing and Pressure Mapping

Flexible and wearable electronics have been widely investigated for the extensive applications in real life. Piezoresistive based sensor is one of the common flexible electronics that could be utilized as electronic skin. By simply transducing the external pressure or stretching into resistor signal and integrated with flexible substrate and advanced functional sensing material, piezoresistive based sensors have been applied as the electronic skin. Here, a thin, skin-integrated, and flexible electronic skin based on piezoresistive working mode is developed. Ultra-thin polydimethylsiloxane substrate integrated with serpentine-like Cu electrode could avoid mechanical failing of the device when it is stretched, bended, or twisted. By adopting the advanced function material, MXene, graphene and Ecoflex mixed composite, the electronic skin could sense not only a wide range of pressure from 20.8 to 132 kPa, but also stretching rate from 0% to 20%, allowing the potential application in human motion capturing. Furthermore, a 4 × 4 arrayed electronic skin is fabricated, and demonstrates the prospective application in pressure mapping. © 2023 The Authors.