Rapid growth and high acceptance of flexible electronics are facilitated by a great demand for personalized services in the ubiquitous era such as personal health-monitoring, [1-3] electronic skins, [4-6] soft robots, [7] augmented reality, [8] and internet

Artificial magnetoception is a new and yet to be explored path for humans to interact with the surroundings. This technology is enabled by thin film magnetic field sensors embedded in a soft and flexible format to constitute magnetosensitive electronic skins (e-skins). Being limited by the sensitivity to in-plane magnetic fields, magnetosensitive e-skins are restricted to basic proximity and angle sensing and are not used as switches or logic elements of interactive wearable electronics. Here, a novel magnetoreceptive platform for on-skin touchless interactive electronics based on flexible spin valve switches with sensitivity to out-of-plane magnetic fields is demonstrated. The technology relies on all-metal Co/Pd-based spin valves with a synthetic antiferromagnet possessing perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The flexible magnetoreceptors act as logic elements, namely momentary and permanent (latching) switches. The switches maintain their performance even upon bending to a radius of less than 3.5 mm and withstand repetitive bending for hundreds of cycles. Here, flexible switches are integrated in on-skin interactive electronics and their performance as touchless human-machine interfaces is demonstrated, which are intuitive to use, energy efficient, and insensitive to external magnetic disturbances. This technology offers qualitatively new functionalities for electronic skins and paves the way towards full-fledged on-skin touchless interactive electronics.

Origami utilizes orchestrated transformation of soft 2D structures into complex 3D architectures, mimicking shapes and functions found in nature. In contrast to origami in nature, synthetic origami lacks the ability to monitor the environment and correspondingly adjust its behavior. Here, magnetic origami actuators with capabilities to sense their orientation and displacement as well as detect their own magnetization state and readiness for supervised folding are designed, fabricated, and demonstrated. These origami actuators integrate photothermal heating and magnetic actuation by using composite thin films (≈60 µm thick) of shape‐memory polymers with embedded magnetic NdFeB microparticles. Mechanically compliant magnetic field sensors, known as magnetosensitive electronic skins, are laminated on the surface of the soft actuators. These ultrathin actuators accomplish sequential folding and recovery, with hinge locations programmed on the fly. Endowing mechanically active smart materials with cognition is an important step toward realizing intelligent, stimuli‐responsive structures.

Crystalline coordination polymers with high electrical conductivities and charge carrier mobilities might open new opportunities for electronic devices. However, current solvent-based synthesis methods hinder compatibility with microfabrication standards. Here, we describe a solvent-free chemical vapor deposition method to prepare high-quality films of the two-dimensional conjugated coordination polymer Cu-BHT (BHT = benzenehexanothiolate). This approach involves the conversion of a metal oxide precursor into Cu-BHT nanofilms with a controllable thickness (20–85 nm) and low roughness (<10 nm) through exposure to the vaporized organic linker. Moreover, the restricted metal ion mobility during the vapor–solid reaction enables high-resolution patterning via both bottom-up lithography, including the fabrication of micron-sized Hall bar and electrode patterns to accurately evaluate the conductivity and mobility values of the Cu-BHT films.

Printed electronics are attractive due to their low-cost and large-area processing features, which have been successfully extended to magnetoresistive sensors and devices. Here, we introduce and characterize a new kind of magnetoresistive paste based on the anisotropic magnetoresistive (AMR) effect. The paste is a composite of 100-nm-thick permalloy/tantalum flakes embedded in an elastomer matrix, which promotes the formation of appropriately conductive percolation networks. Sensors printed with this paste showed stable magnetoresistive properties upon mechanical bending. The AMR value of this sensor is $$0.34\%$$ 0.34 % in the field of 400 mT. Still, the response is stable and allows to resolve sub-mT field steps. When printed on ultra-thin 2.5-$$\upmu \hbox {m}$$ μ m -thick Mylar foil, the sensor can be completely folded without losing magnetoresistive performance and mechanically withstand $$20\, \upmu {\hbox {m}}$$ 20 μ m bending radius. The developed compliant printed AMR sensor would be attractive to implement on curved and/or dynamic bendable surfaces for on-skin applications and interactive printed electronics.