Fully Organic Self-Powered Electronic Skin with Multifunctional and Highly Robust Sensing Capability

Abstract

Electronic skin (e-skin) with skin-like flexibility and tactile sensation will promote the great advancements in the fields of wearable equipment. Thus, the multifunction and high robustness are two important requirements for sensing capability of the e-skin. Here, a fully organic self-powered e-skin (FOSE-skin) based on the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is developed. FOSE-skin based on TENG can be fully self-healed within 10 hours after being sheared by employing the self-healing polymer as a triboelectric layer and ionic liquid with the temperature sensitivity as an electrode. FOSE-skin based on TENG has the multifunctional and highly robust sensing capability and can sense the pressure and temperature simultaneously. The sensing capability of the FOSE-skin based on TENG can be highly robust with no changes after self-healing. FOSE-skin based on TENG can be employed to detect the arm swing, the temperature change of flowing water, and the motion trajectory. This work provides a new idea for solving the issues of monofunctional and low robust sensing capability for FOSE-skin based on TENG, which can further promote the application of wearable electronics in soft robotics and bionic prosthetics.