A Brief Review on E-skin and its Multifunctional Sensing Applications

Abstract

Electronic skin (e-skin) is an artificial skin that mimics the sensing capabilities of human skin, which brings many potential applications in robotics, artificial intelligence, prosthetics, and health monitoring technologies. Many attempts associated with various mechanisms/approaches and materials/structures have been developed to match the e-skins to the particular functions of specific applications. Along the time, high sensitivity, mechanical flexibility/stretchability, multifunction, and large area are common driving forces in the research area. New materials, with a variety of structures and unique properties, offer a plenty of freedoms in designing and fabricating e-skins. Significant progress has been made in recently years. This paper firstly reviews the most recent progress on nanomaterial- based e-skins according to four major sensing mechanisms, with an emphasis on the effects of various materials on the sensitivity and stretchability of e-skins. Then the paper updates the progress and effort with respect to multifunctional e-skins and organic-thin-film-transistor based large-area e-skins. Further development possibilities are also briefly discussed.