Compliant lightweight non-invasive standalone “Marine Skin” tagging system

Abstract

Current marine research primarily depends on weighty and invasive sensory equipment and telemetric network to understand the marine environment, including the diverse fauna it contains, as a function of animal behavior and size, as well as equipment longevity. To match animal morphology and activity within the surrounding marine environment, here we show a physically flexible and stretchable skin-like and waterproof autonomous multifunctional system, integrating Bluetooth, memory chip, and high performance physical sensors. The sensory tag is mounted on a swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus) and is capable of continuous logging of depth, temperature, and salinity within the harsh ocean environment. The fully packaged, ultra-lightweight (<2.4 g in water), and compliant "Marine Skin" system does not have any wired connection enabling safe and weightless cuttingedge approach to monitor and assess marine life and the ecosystem's health to support conservation and management of marine ecosystems.

A Highly Sensitive, Reliable, and High‐Temperature‐Resistant Flexible Pressure Sensor Based on Ceramic Nanofibers

“…[ 12,13 ] Besides, since direct contact with bulky and airtight devices may cause discomfort and even inflammation to skins, [ 14 ] flexible sensors that are lightweight [ 15 ] and breathable, [ 16 ] are expected for mobile and comfortable daily wearing. In particular, wearable sensors that can be used in harsh environments, including situations with high/low temperatures, [ 17 ] high salinity, [ 18 ] high/low humidity, [ 19 ] and ultrahigh pressures, [ 20 ] are in increasing demand. [ 21 ] For example, biometric data (e.g., heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, and electrocardiogram) collected by physiological monitoring of firefighters on the fireground can provide near‐real‐time information for the commander to make critical decisions about the dangerous level of the members operating on the scene, which will enhance a firefighter's safety and survivability.…”

Animal-Borne Telemetry: An Integral Component of the Ocean Observing Toolkit

“…Revolutions in sensor technology are also being translated into a new generation of sensors to track marine life, with significantly reduced footprints and power requirements, including the capacity to harvest power from the environment, better accommodating animal anatomy and movement and containing significantly enhanced capacities for data storage and analysis. Examples of these revolutionary sensors include the "marine skin," a flexible-stretchable silicon-printed sensor system that brings the concept of wearable to marine animal tags (Nassar et al, 2018), new magnetic sensors to monitor animal behaviors in detail (Kaidarova et al, 2018a), and graphene-based flexible, ultrathin, and light salinity sensors to acquire oceanographic information (Kaidarova et al, 2018b).…”

Flexible and Stretchable Electronics for Harsh‐Environmental Applications

“…Table 2 summarizes the environmental variables that are experienced in these fields. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Every material has a feature that defines its limitation in a harsh environment (band gap energy, inter-atomic bonding, breakdown field, carrier mobility, crystal structures, and existing defects). [12][13][14] A material can be inherently resistant to an aggressive environment or it can be tailored to the corrosion caused by strongly oxidizing acidic environments.…”