Electronic robotic skin (representational image)

Researchers in China have built a neuromorphic robotic electronic skin that allows humanoid robots to sense touch, detect injury, and respond to harmful contact with rapid, reflex-like movements inspired by the human nervous system. The development addresses a long-standing limitation in robotics. When humans touch something dangerously hot or sharp, sensory nerves send signals directly to the spinal cord, triggering an almost instantaneous withdrawal before the brain fully processes the pain……..Continue reading….

By: Neetika Walter

Source: Interesting Engineering

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Electronic skin refers to flexible, stretchable and self-healing electronics that are able to mimic functionalities of human or animal skin. The broad class of materials often contain sensing abilities that are intended to reproduce the capabilities of human skin to respond to environmental factors such as changes in heat and pressure. Advances in electronic skin research focuses on designing materials that are stretchy, robust, and flexible.

Research in the individual fields of flexible electronics and tactile sensing has progressed greatly; however, electronic skin design attempts to bring together advances in many areas of materials research without sacrificing individual benefits from each field. The successful combination of flexible and stretchable mechanical properties with sensors and the ability to self-heal would open the door to many possible applications including soft robotics, prosthetics, artificial intelligence and health monitoring.

Recent advances in the field of electronic skin have focused on incorporating green materials ideals and environmental awareness into the design process. As one of the main challenges facing electronic skin development is the ability of the material to withstand mechanical strain and maintain sensing ability or electronic properties, recyclability and self-healing properties are especially critical in the future design of new electronic skins.

The ability of electronic skin to withstand mechanical deformation including stretching and flexing without losing functionality is crucial for its applications as prosthetics, artificial intelligence, soft robotics, health monitoring, biocompatibility, and communication devices. Flexible electronics are often designed by depositing electronic materials on flexible polymer substrates, thereby relying on an organic substrate to impart favorable mechanical properties.

Stretchable e-skin materials have been approached from two directions. Hybrid materials can rely on an organic network for stretchiness while embedding inorganic particles or sensors, which are not inherently stretchable. Other research has focused on developing stretchable materials that also have favorable electronic or sensing capabilities. Skin is composed of collagen, keratin, and elastin fibers, which provide robust mechanical strength, low modulus, tear resistance, and softness.

The skin can be considered as a bilayer of epidermis and dermis. The epidermal layer has a modulus of about 140–600 kPa and a thickness of 0.05–1.5 mm. Dermis has a modulus of 2–80 kPa and a thickness of 0.3–3 mm. This bilayer skin exhibits an elastic linear response for strains less than 15% and a non linear response at larger strains. To achieve conformability, it is preferable for devices to match the mechanical properties of the epidermis layer when designing skin-based stretchy electronics.

Conventional high performance electronic devices are made of inorganic materials such as silicon, which is rigid and brittle in nature and exhibits poor biocompatibility due to mechanical mismatch between the skin and the device, making skin integrated electronics applications difficult. To solve this challenge, researchers employed the method of constructing flexible electronics in the form of ultrathin layers.

The resistance to bending of a material object (Flexural rigidity) is related to the third power of the thickness, according to the Euler-Bernoulli equation for a beam. It implies that objects with less thickness can bend and stretch more easily. As a result, even though the material has a relatively high Young’s modulus, devices manufactured on ultrathin substrates exhibit a decrease in bending stiffness and allow bending to a small radius of curvature without fracturing.

Thin devices have been developed as a result of significant advancements in the field of nanotechnology, fabrication, and manufacturing. The aforementioned approach was used to create devices composed of 100–200 nm thick Si nano membranes deposited on thin flexible polymeric substrates.

Furthermore, structural design considerations can be used to tune the mechanical stability of the devices. Engineering the original surface structure allows us to soften the stiff electronics. Buckling, island connection, and the Kirigami concept have all been employed successfully to make the entire system stretchy. The development of conductive electronic skin is of interest for many electrical applications. Research into conductive electronic skin has taken two routes: conductive self-healing polymers or embedding conductive inorganic materials in non-conductive polymer networks.

The self-healing conductive composite synthesized by Tee et al. (Figure 2) investigated the incorporation of micro-structured nickel particles into a polymer host. The nickel particles adhere to the network though favorable interactions between the native oxide layer on the surface of the particles and the hydrogen-bonding polymer.

Neuromorphic compute startup Unconventional AI raises $475m in seed funding

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