Abstract
A fungal skin is a thin flexible sheet of a living homogeneous mycelium made by a filamentous fungus. The skin could be used in future living architectures of adaptive buildings and as a sensing living skin for soft self-growing/adaptive robots. In experimental laboratory studies we demonstrate that the fungal skin is capable for recognising mechanical and optical stimulation. The skin reacts differently to loading of a weight, removal of the weight, and switching illumination on and off. These are the first experimental evidences that fungal materials can be used not only as mechanical ‘skeletons’ in architecture and robotics but also as intelligent skins capable for recognition of external stimuli and sensorial fusion.
Highlights
Flexible electronics, especially electronic skins [1,2,3] is amongst the most rapidly growing and promising fields of novel and emergent hardware
Typical designs of electronic skins include thin-film transistor and pressure sensors integrated in a plastic substrate [11], micro-patterned polydimethylsiloxane with carbon nanotube ultra-thin films [12, 13], a large-area film synthesised by sulfurisation of a tungsten film [14], multilayered graphene [15], platinum ribbons [3], Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) based silver electrodes [16], digitally printed hybrid electrodes for electromyographic recording [17] or for piezoresistive pressure sensing [18], or channels filled with conductive polymer [19]
The fungal skin responds to loading of a weight with a high-amplitude wide spike of electrical potential sometimes followed by a train of high-frequency spikes
Summary
Especially electronic skins [1,2,3] is amongst the most rapidly growing and promising fields of novel and emergent hardware. Whilst the existing designs and implementations are highly impactful, the prototypes of electronic skins lack a capacity to self-repair and grow. Such properties are useful, and could be necessary, when an electronic skin is used in e.g. unconventional living architecture [20], soft and self-growing robots [21,22,23,24] and development of intelligent materials from fungi [25,26,27,28]. The protocol for growing the fungal skin and the methods of electrical activity recording are described in “Methods” section
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