Human–computer interfaces, smart glasses, touch screens, and some electronic skins require highly transparent and flexible pressure‐sensing elements. Flexible pressure sensors often apply a microstructured or porous active material to improve their sensitivity and response speed. However, the microstructures or small pores will result in high haze and low transparency of the device, and thus it is challenging to balance the sensitivity and transparency simultaneously in flexible pressure sensors or electronic skins. Here, for a capacitive‐type sensor that consists of a porous polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) film sandwiched between two transparent electrodes, the challenge is addressed by filling the pores with ionic liquid that has the same refractive index with PVDF, and the transmittance of the film dramatically boosts from 0 to 94.8% in the visible range. Apart from optical matching, the ionic liquid also significantly improves the signal intensity as well as the sensitivity due to the formation of an electric double layer at the dielectric‐electrode interfaces, and improves the toughness and stretchability of the active material benefiting from a plasticization effect. Such transparent and flexible sensors will be useful in smart windows, invisible bands, and so forth.
Electrodermal devices that capture the physiological response of skin are crucial for monitoring vital signals, but they often require convoluted layered designs with either electronic or ionic active materials relying on complicated synthesis procedures, encapsulation, and packaging techniques. Here, we report that the ionic transport in living systems can provide a simple mode of iontronic sensing and bypass the need of artificial ionic materials. A simple skin-electrode mechanosensing structure (SEMS) is constructed, exhibiting high pressure-resolution and spatial-resolution, being capable of feeling touch and detecting weak physiological signals such as fingertip pulse under different skin humidity. Our mechanical analysis reveals the critical role of instability in high-aspect-ratio microstructures on sensing. We further demonstrate pressure mapping with millimeter-spatial-resolution using a fully textile SEMS-based glove. The simplicity and reliability of SEMS hold great promise of diverse healthcare applications, such as pulse detection and recovering the sensory capability in patients with tactile dysfunction.
A new kind of agar-polyacrylamide/graphene oxide (agar-PAM/GO) nanocomposite double network (DN) hydrogels is successfully synthesized using one-pot method. The agar-PAM/GO DN hydrogel consists of first agar network cross-linked via hydrogen bond and second PAM network with GO severing as physically cross-linking agent. The factors that influence the mechanical properties of agar-PAM/GO DN gel is investigated. The DN hydrogel exhibits excellent mechanical properties with fracture strain of 4 600% and fracture strength of 332 kPa. In addition, the DN hydrogel shows a good fatigue resistance and self-healing ability.
The transfer of stretchable electrodes or devices from one substrate to another thin elastomer is challenging as the elastic stamp often yields a huge strain beyond the stretchability limit of the electrodes at the debonded interface. This will not happen if the stamp is rigid. However, a rigid material cannot be used as the substrate for stretchable electrodes. Herein, silk fibroin with tunable rigidity (Young's modulus can be changed from 134 kPa to 1.84 GPa by controlling the relative humidity) is used to transfer highly stretchable metal networks as highly conformable epidermal electrodes. The silk fibroin stamp is tuned to be rigid during peeling, and then be soft and highly stretchable as a substrate when laminated on moisturized human skin. In addition, the epidermal electrodes exhibit no skin irritation or inflammation after attaching for over 10 d. The high compliance results in a lower interface impedance and lower noises of the electrode in measuring electromyographic signals, compared with commercial Ag‐AgCl gel electrodes. The strategy of tuning the rigidity at different stages of transfer is a general method that can be extended to the transfer of other stretchable electrodes and devices for epidermal electronics, human machine interfaces, and soft robotics.
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