Abstract
Wearable technology has attracted significant public attention and has generated huge societal and economic impact, leading to changes of both personal lifestyles and formats of healthcare. An important type of devices in wearable technology is flexible and stretchable skin sensors used primarily for biophysiological signal sensing and biomolecule analysis on skin. These sensors offer mechanical compatibility to human skin and maximum compliance to skin morphology and motion, demonstrating great potential as promising alternatives to current wearable electronic devices based on rigid substrates and packages. The mechanisms behind the design and applications of these sensors are numerous, involving profound knowledge about the physical and chemical properties of the sensors and the skin. The corresponding materials are diverse, featuring thin elastic films and unique stretchable structures based on traditional hard or ductile materials. In addition, the fabrication techniques that range from complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication to innovative additive manufacturing have led to various sensor formats. This paper reviews mechanisms, materials, fabrication techniques, and representative applications of flexible and stretchable skin sensors, and provides perspective of future trends of the sensors in improving biomedical sensing, human machine interfacing, and quality of life.
Highlights
Rapid growth in electronic technology yields miniaturized electronic devices and recent evolution of wearable electronic technology that can be integrated on human bodies and conduct diverse functions, such as mobile computation [1], health monitoring [2,3], activity tracking [4,5,6], and rehabilitation [7]
This paper reviews the mechanisms, materials, fabrication techniques, and the representative applications of flexible and stretchable skin sensors. These sensors are constructed by various intrinsic soft materials or stretchable thin film structures with applications in biophysiological signal measurement and activity tracking, offering improved precision and effectiveness of body integration
Flexible and stretchable skin sensors can collect massive amount of data associated with personal biomedical information and life-style
Summary
Rapid growth in electronic technology yields miniaturized electronic devices and recent evolution of wearable electronic technology that can be integrated on human bodies and conduct diverse functions, such as mobile computation [1], health monitoring [2,3], activity tracking [4,5,6], and rehabilitation [7]. Some wearable devices are based on flexible and stretchable skin sensors, which are used primarily for biophysiological signal sensing and biomolecule analyzing on skin. These sensors can serve as activity tracking devices to record basic biophysiological parameters, or used for facilitating diagnosis and treatment of certain diseases such as diabetes [12], cystic fibrosis [13], dermatitis [14,15], and Micromachines 2017, 8, 69; doi:10.3390/mi8030069 www.mdpi.com/journal/micromachines. Flexible and stretchable skin sensors hold the promise to replace current wearable sensors based on rigid substrates and packages, and may eventually lead to the revolutionary changes in the formats of continuous, long-term health monitoring devices to improve social health levels
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