Local Crack‐Programmed Gold Nanowire Electronic Skin Tattoos for In‐Plane Multisensor Integration

Abstract

Sensitive, specific, yet multifunctional tattoo‐like electronics are ideal wearable systems for “any time, any where” health monitoring because they can virtually become parts of the human skin, offering a burdenless “unfeelable” wearing experience. A skin‐like, multifunctional electronic tattoo made entirely from gold using a standing enokitake‐mushroom‐like vertically aligned nanowire membrane in conjunction with a programmable local cracking technology is reported. Unlike previous multifunctional systems, only a single material type is needed for the integrated gold circuits involved in interconnects and multiplexed specific sensors, thereby avoiding the use of complex multimaterials interfaces. This is possiblebecause the programmable local cracking technology allows for the arbitrary fine‐tuning of the properties of elastic gold conductors from strain‐insensitive to highly strain‐sensitive simply by adjusting localized crack size, shape, and orientations—a capability impossible to achieve with previous bulk cracking technology. Furthermore, in‐plane integration of strain/pressure sensors, anisotropic orientation‐specific sensors, strain‐insensitive stretchable interconnects, temperature sensors, glucose sensors, and lactate sensors without the need of soldering or gluing are demonstrated. This strategy opens a new general route for the design of next‐generation wearable electronic tattoos.

Electronic Skin Wearable Sensors for Detecting Lumbar–Pelvic Movements

“…This might be due to the slimline design (maximum thickness of 5 mm) and lightweight (2 g), which allows the soft and highly stretchable E-skin sensor to adhere conformally to the curvilinear skin surface [78,79], reducing the inertial effect during movements as compared to the bulkier (100.6 mm in width, 30.4 mm in length, and 9 mm in height) and 20-fold heavier ViMove. Besides, the conformal attachment of E-skin sensors to skin surface also avoid the drifting errors that IMU-based sensor has, which allows more accurate measurement of strain [80].…”

Material Design and Fabrication Strategies for Stretchable Metallic Nanocomposites

“…such as ultrathin metal/oxide films on polymeric substrates [26][27][28] and wavy or serpentine-shaped thin metals [29][30][31] have been proposed. Although the aforementioned approaches have increased the durability and robustness of electrodes against mechanical deformations, [32,33] critical challenges still remain such as the intrinsic rigidity and brittleness of such conventional conducting materials and the resulting mechanical mismatch with human tissues and organs.…”

Wearable Devices Using Nanoparticle Chains as Universal Building Blocks with Simple Filtration‐Based Fabrication and Quantum Sensing

“…[ 10–13 ] At the same time the wearable device should be made from materials that can be safely handled by users without any health hazards. A variety of materials and strategies have been used to make devices that can accomplish such tasks, typically using a combination of materials such as CNT, [ 14 ] elastomers, [ 15 ] trace patterns of thin films of metals, [ 5 ] metallic [ 16,17 ] and semi conducting nanomaterials, [ 18 ] piezoelectric materials, [ 19 ] thermoelectric materials, [ 11 ] and so on. The fabrication of the devices typically involves multiple steps with deposition of a variety of materials which act as the sensing layers for different stimuli, interconnects and the electrodes.…”