Multistage Microstructured Ionic Skin for Real-Time Vital Signs Monitoring and Human-Machine Interaction

Skin-like electronics research aiming to mimic even surpass human-like specific tactile cognition by operating perception-to-cognition-to-feedback of stimulus to build intelligent cognition systems for certain imperceptible or inappreciable signals was so attractive. Herein, we constructed an all-in-one tri-modal pressure sensing wearable device to address the issue of power supply by integrating multistage microstructured ionic skin (MM i-skin) and thermoelectric self-power staffs, which exhibits high sensitivity simultaneously. The MM i-skin with multi-stage "interlocked" configurations achieved precise recognition of subtle signals, where the sensitivity reached up to 3.95 kPa-1, as well as response time of 46 ms, cyclic stability (over 1500 cycles), a wide detection range of 0-200 kPa. Furthermore, we developed the thermoelectricity nanogenerator, piezoelectricity nanogenerator, and piezocapacitive sensing as an integrated tri-modal pressure sensing, denoted as P-iskin, T-iskin, and C-iskin, respectively. This multifunctional ionic skin enables real-time monitoring of weak body signals, rehab guidance, and robotic motion recognition, demonstrating potential for Internet of things (IoT) applications involving the artificial intelligence-motivated sapiential healthcare Internet (SHI) and widely distributed human-machine interaction (HMI). Inspired by the multi-level interlocking structure in human skin, the microlevel multi-stage "interlocked" configuration ionic skin is prepared by the bio-template method, and an all-in-one tri-modal pressure sensing wearable device was constructed by integrating thermoelectricity nanogenerator, piezoelectricity nanogenerator, and piezocapacitive sensing, which demonstrates the potential for addressing the issue of power supply and Internet of things applications. image