An important trend in electronics involves the development of materials, mechanical designs and manufacturing strategies that enable the use of unconventional substrates, such as polymer films, metal foils, paper sheets or rubber slabs. The last possibility is particularly challenging because the systems must accommodate not only bending but also stretching. Although several approaches are available for the electronics, a persistent difficulty is in power supplies that have similar mechanical properties, to allow their co-integration with the electronics. Here we introduce a set of materials and design concepts for a rechargeable lithium ion battery technology that exploits thin, low modulus silicone elastomers as substrates, with a segmented design in the active materials, and unusual 'self-similar' interconnect structures between them. The result enables reversible levels of stretchability up to 300%, while maintaining capacity densities of B1.1 mAh cm À 2 . Stretchable wireless power transmission systems provide the means to charge these types of batteries, without direct physical contact.

Stretchable electronic devices, such as p-n diodes, [1] photovoltaic devices, [2,3] transistors, [4,5] and functional electronic eyes, [6] have been fabricated using buckled single-crystal (e.g., Si, GaAs) thin films supported by elastomeric substrates. Recently, carbon nanotube (CNT)-based highly conducting elastic composites [7,8] and stretchable graphene films [9] have been reported, which are suitable as interconnects in stretchable electronic devices. As an indispensable component of stretchable electronics, a stretchable power-source device should be able to accommodate large strains while retaining intact function. Of various power-source devices, supercapacitors have attracted great interest in recent years due to their high power and energy densities compared with lithium-ion batteries and conventional dielectric capacitors, respectively. The most active research in supercapacitors is the development of new electrode materials. Recently, CNTs have been studied as good candidates for electrode materials [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] because of several advantages, including a high surface area, nanoscale dimensions, and excellent electrical conductivity.Here, we report stretchable supercapacitors based on periodically sinusoidal single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) macrofilms (a 2D network of randomly oriented SWNTs). The stretchable supercapacitors comprise two sinusoidal SWNT macrofilms as stretchable electrodes, an organic electrolyte, and a polymeric separator. Electrochemical tests were performed and the fabricated stretchable supercapacitors are found to possess energy and power densities comparable with those of supercapacitors using pristine SWNT macrofilms as electrodes. Remarkably, the electrochemical performance of the stretchable supercapacitors remains unchanged even under 30% applied tensile strain.The preparation of the periodically sinusoidal SWNT macrofilms is of primary importance for stretchable supercapacitors. The synthesis of high-quality, purified, and functionalized SWNT macrofilms is, thus, an important preprocess, which has been presented elsewhere.[17] The purified SWNT macrofilm was then shaped to a sinusoidal form by following the steps shown in Figure 1a. The procedure introduced here (step i in Fig. 1a) involves the uniaxial prestretching (e pre ) of an elastomeric substrate of a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) slab (e pre ¼ DL/L for length changed from L to L þ DL), followed by a chemical surface treatment to form a hydrophilic surface (see Experimental Section). The exposure of UV light introduces atomic oxygen, an activated species that reacts with PDMS and, thus, changes the Figure 1. Fabrication steps of a buckled SWNT macrofilm on an elastomeric PDMS substrate. a) Illustration of the fabrication flow comprising surface treatment, transfer, and relaxation of the prestrained PDMS substrate. b) Optical microscopy image of a 50-nm-thick, buckled SWNT macrofilm on a PDMS substrate with 30% prestrain, where the well-defined periodic buckling structure is shown. c) SEM image of ...

Animal bodies are mainly composed of hydrogels — polymer networks infiltrated with water. Most biological hydrogels are mechanically flexible yet robust, and they accommodate transportations (e.g., convection and diffusion) and reactions of various essential substances for life – endowing living bodies with exquisite functions such as sensing and responding, self-healing, self-reinforcing and self-regulating et al. To harness hydrogels’ unique properties and functions, intensive efforts have been devoted to developing various biomimetic structures and devices based on hydrogels. Examples include hydrogel valves for flow control in microfluidics[1], adaptive micro lenses activated by stimuli-responsive hydrogels[2], color-tunable colloidal crystals from hydrogel particles[3, 4], complex micro patterns switched by hydrogel-actuated nanostructures[5], responsive buckled hydrogel surfaces[6], and griping and self-walking structures based on hydrogels[7–9]. Entering the era of mobile health or mHealth, as unprecedented amounts of electronic devices are being integrated with human body[10–14], hydrogels with similar physiological and mechanical properties as human tissues represent ideal matrix/coating materials for electronics and devices to achieve long-term effective bio-integrations[15–17]. However, owing to the weak and brittle nature of common synthetic hydrogels, existing hydrogel electronics and devices mostly suffer from the limitation of low mechanical robustness and low stretchability. On the other hand, while hydrogels with extraordinary mechanical properties, or so-called tough hydrogels, have been recently developed[18–22], it is still challenging to fabricate tough hydrogels into stretchable electronics and devices capable of novel functions. The design of robust, stretchable and biocompatible hydrogel electronics and devices represents a critical challenge in the emerging field of soft materials, electronics and devices.

Soft robots outperform the conventional hard robots on significantly enhanced safety, adaptability, and complex motions. The development of fully soft robots, especially fully from smart soft materials to mimic soft animals, is still nascent. In addition, to date, existing soft robots cannot adapt themselves to the surrounding environment, i.e., sensing and adaptive motion or response, like animals. Here, compliant ultrathin sensing and actuating electronics innervated fully soft robots that can sense the environment and perform soft bodied crawling adaptively, mimicking an inchworm, are reported. The soft robots are constructed with actuators of open-mesh shaped ultrathin deformable heaters, sensors of single-crystal Si optoelectronic photodetectors, and thermally responsive artificial muscle of carbon-black-doped liquid-crystal elastomer (LCE-CB) nanocomposite. The results demonstrate that adaptive crawling locomotion can be realized through the conjugation of sensing and actuation, where the sensors sense the environment and actuators respond correspondingly to control the locomotion autonomously through regulating the deformation of LCE-CB bimorphs and the locomotion of the robots. The strategy of innervating soft sensing and actuating electronics with artificial muscles paves the way for the development of smart autonomous soft robots.

Artificial synaptic devices that can be stretched similar to those appearing in soft-bodied animals, such as earthworms, could be seamlessly integrated onto soft machines toward enabled neurological functions. Here, we report a stretchable synaptic transistor fully based on elastomeric electronic materials, which exhibits a full set of synaptic characteristics. These characteristics retained even the rubbery synapse that is stretched by 50%. By implementing stretchable synaptic transistor with mechanoreceptor in an array format, we developed a deformable sensory skin, where the mechanoreceptors interface the external stimulations and generate presynaptic pulses and then the synaptic transistors render postsynaptic potentials. Furthermore, we demonstrated a soft adaptive neurorobot that is able to perform adaptive locomotion based on robotic memory in a programmable manner upon physically tapping the skin. Our rubbery synaptic transistor and neurologically integrated devices pave the way toward enabled neurological functions in soft machines and other applications.

Stretchable rubber-like electronics from intrinsically stretchable semiconductors and conductors are demonstrated.

The use of shape memory polymers is demonstrated for deformable, programmable, and shape‐memorizing micro‐optical devices. A semi‐crystalline shape memory elastomer, crosslinked poly(ethylene‐co‐vinyl acetate), is used to prepare various micro‐optic components, ranging from microlens and microprism arrays to diffraction gratings and holograms. The precise replication of surface features at the micro‐ and nanoscale and the formation of crosslinked shape memory polymer networks can be achieved in a single step via compression molding. Further deformation via hot pressing or stretching of micro‐optics formed in this manner allows manipulation of the microscopic surface features, and thus the corresponding optical properties. Due to the shape memory effect, the original surface structures and the optical properties can be recovered and the devices be reprogrammed, with excellent reversibility in the optical properties. Furthermore, arrays of transparent resistive microheaters can be integrated with deformed micro‐optical devices to selectively trigger the recovery of surface features in a spatially programmable manner, thereby providing additional capabilities in user‐definable optics.

An accurate extraction of physiological and physical signals from human skin is crucial for health monitoring, disease prevention, and treatment. Recent advances in wearable bioelectronics directly embedded to the epidermal surface are a promising solution for future epidermal sensing. However, the existing wearable bioelectronics are susceptible to motion artifacts as they lack proper adhesion and conformal interfacing with the skin during motion. Here, we present ultra-conformal, customizable, and deformable drawn-on-skin electronics, which is robust to motion due to strong adhesion and ultra-conformality of the electronic inks drawn directly on skin. Electronic inks, including conductors, semiconductors, and dielectrics, are drawn on-demand in a freeform manner to develop devices, such as transistors, strain sensors, temperature sensors, heaters, skin hydration sensors, and electrophysiological sensors. Electrophysiological signal monitoring during motion shows drawn-on-skin electronics' immunity to motion artifacts. Additionally, electrical stimulation based on drawn-onskin electronics demonstrates accelerated healing of skin wounds.