Bioinspired Perspiration‐Wicking Electronic Skins for Comfortable and Reliable Multimodal Health Monitoring

Abstract

Electronic skins (e‐skins) have gained tremendous attention in health monitoring and disease diagnosis. However, the accumulated sweat at the skin/e‐skin interface would compromise the comfort, reliability, and fidelity for long‐term monitoring. Here, inspired by the active liquid transport phenomenon in nature, a biomimetic gold/thermoplastic polyurethane/cellulose membrane (Au/TPU/CM) based e‐skin is reported that can “pump” perspiration from the interface immediately through the combination of gradient porosity and surface energy gradient. The resulting electrode possesses good conductivity (2.68 Ω sq–1), excellent flexibility (the resistance only fluctuated 1.1% and 0.4% after 10 000 bending cycles and 2500 tensile cycles, respectively), and outstanding water vapor transmission and water evaporation rate (2.2 and 7.1 times as much as that of cotton fabric, respectively). The ultrafast perspiration‐wicking capability not only improves the wearing comfort but also minimizes the measurement error of skin hydration and temperature due to perspiration, eliminates the risk of short circuit in sensor array, and reduces the noise level, significantly enhancing the accuracy and reliability of multimodal sensing in e‐skins. The design strategy may encourage more material and structure development in e‐skins with improved sweat tolerance.

Radiative Cooling Nanofabric for Personal Thermal Management

“…It can be seen that RCNF shows the WER at 450 mg/h, which is three times higher than that of cotton fabric (i.e., 150 mg/h). Note that the WER through porous fibrous materials is a complex process, which is determined by hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity and area density of the materials. , In this study, the hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity of RCNF and cotton is measured by the water contact angle (WCA). The WCA of RCNF is about 144.6° (Figure S6a), which is greater than 90° to meet the requirement of hydrophobicity .…”

Biomimetic Chromotropic Photonic‐Ionic Skin with Robust Resilience, Adhesion, and Stability

“…Skins, as important windows for organisms to communicate with the environment, are capable of sensing a variety of stimuli and encoding them into bioelectrical signals to transmit to the nervous system. [1][2][3] To imitate the properties of biological skins, various artificial skins have been developed, including electronic skins [4][5][6] and ionic skins (I-skins). [7][8][9][10][11] I-skins exhibit great potential in wearable intelligent devices and soft robotics due to the inherent advantages of replicating the ionic transduction mechanism of biological skins and possessing high optical transparency and customizable mechanical properties.…”

Wearable, fast-healing, and self-adhesive multifunctional photoactive hydrogel for strain and temperature sensing

“…Wearable sensors have generated tremendous research interest in elds such as electronic skin (E-skin), 1 human-machine interfaces, 2,3 intelligent robots, [4][5][6] and real-time healthcare monitoring. 3,[7][8][9][10][11] Among various so physical sensors, hydrogels with biocompatibility, bionic structure of so tissues, and tunable mechanical properties rank as promising candidates to mimic human somatosensory functions and perceive a change against stimuli.…”