Designing electronic skin (e-skin) with proteins is a critical way to endow e-skin with biocompatibility, but engineering protein structures to achieve controllable mechanical properties and self-healing ability remains a challenge. Here, we develop a hybrid gluten network through the incorporation of a eutectic gallium indium alloy (EGaIn) to design a self-healable e-skin with improved mechanical properties. The intrinsic reversible disulfide bond/sulfhydryl group reconfiguration of gluten networks is explored as a driving force to introduce EGaIn as a chemical cross-linker, thus inducing secondary structure rearrangement of gluten to form additional β-sheets as physical cross-linkers. Remarkably, the obtained gluten-based material is self-healing, achieves synthetic material-like stretchability (>1600%) and possesses the ability to promote skin cell proliferation. The final e-skin is biocompatible and biodegradable and can sense strain changes from human motions of different scales. The protein network microregulation method paves the way for future skin-like protein-based e-skin.

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Electric field-based noncontact flexible electronics (EF-NFEs) allow people to communicate with intelligent devices through noncontact human–machine interactions, but current EF-NFEs with limited detections (usually <20 cm) distance often lack a high spatial resolution. Here, we report a versatile material for preparing EF-NFE devices with a high spatial resolution to realize everyday human activity detection. Eutectic gallium–indium alloy (EGaIn) was introduced into poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) chains to fabricate this material, named Ga-PP. The introduction of EGaIn successfully regulates the intra- and interchain interactions of PEDOT chains and thus increases the π-electron accumulation on Ga-PP chains, which facilitates improvement of the electron storage of Ga-PP and its noncontact sensing ability. The water solubility of the obtained Ga-PP can reach approximately 15 mg/mL, comparable to that of commercial PEDOT:PSS, thus making Ga-PP suitable for various design strategies to prepare EF-NFE devices. We demonstrate that a conductive textile with a noncontact sensing ability can be achieved by immersing a commercial silk fabric into a Ga-PP solution for 5 min. With a detection distance exceeding 1 m, the prepared Ga-PP-based conductive textile (Ga-PP-CT) possesses outstanding noncontact sensing sensitivity, showing advantages in tracing the locations of signal sources and distinguishing motion states. Surprisingly, even when placed in water, Ga-PP-CT can be used to monitor the movement signals of athletes in different sporting events and output specific noncontact response signals for different sports. Intriguingly, the Ga-PP solution itself can be used to construct noncontact sensing conductive circuits, displaying the potential to be incorporated into smart electronics.

CNTs are often not competitive for super capacitors, electrochemical catalysis, and sensing applications. [9][10][11] To tackle this issue, introducing mesopore structure in the walls of CNTs has been proposed since abundant mesopores can provide a higher surface area and even the possibility of creating shorter diffusion paths and lower resistance to mass transfer. [12][13][14][15][16] Directly fabricating mesopores out side the walls of commercial CNTs has been proposed in the literature. For example, Qian and coworkers prepared a CNT@mesoporous carbon via the hardtemplate method, [17] in which CNT@mesoporous silica composites were impregnated with furfural alcohol (the carbon source) and oxalic acid (the catalyst), followed by carbonization and removal of the mesoporous silica template. Fu et al. synthesized a mesoporous carboncoated CNT through a coassembling method. [18] This method involved the coassembly of the positively charged 1alkyl3methylimidazolium ions with negatively charged silica oligomers and resorcinol formaldehyde resin as the carbon source. Zhu and coworkers synthesized CNT@mesoporous carbon nanofibers by a moleculemediated interfacial coassembly, [19] in which the F127 was assembled with polydopamine in the assistance of 1,3,5trimethylbenzene. However, the commercial CNTs often have entanglement issues, resulting in a nonuniform mesoporous shell coating. Moreover, these mesoporous CNTs usually have narrow tube 1D carbon nanotubes have been widely applied in many fields, such as catalysis, sensing and energy storage. However, the long tunnel-like pores and relatively low specific surface area of carbon nanotubes often restrict their performance in certain applications. Herein, a dual-silica template-mediated method to prepare nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon nanotubes (NMCTs) through co-depositing polydopamine (both carbon and nitrogen precursors) and silica nanoparticles (the porogen for mesopore formation) on a silica nanowire template is proposed. The obtained NMCTs have a hierarchical pore structure of large open mesopores and tubular macropores, a high specific surface area (1037 m 2 g −1 ), and homogeneous nitrogen doping. The NMCT-45 (prepared at an interval time of 45 min) shows excellent performance in supercapacitor applications with a high capacitance (373.6 F g −1 at 1.0 A g −1 ), excellent rate capability, high energy density (11.6 W h kg −1 at a power density of 313 W kg −1 ), and outstanding cycling stability (98.2% capacity retention after 10 000 cycles at 10 A g −1 ). Owing to the unique tubular morphology, hierarchical porosity and homogeneous N-doping, the NMCT also has tremendous potential in electrochemical catalysis and sensing applications.