Skin-Inspired Electronics and Its Applications in Advanced Intelligent Systems

Recent interdisciplinary progress in flexible materials, devices, and system designs has brought about an emerging paradigm of skin-like multifunctional electronic platforms named skin-inspired electronics. Featured with excellent flexible mechanical properties, thin and conformal devices, and integrated sensing functions similar to those of human skin, skin-inspired electronics exhibit great potential in the application fields of wearable electronics and human-machine interfaces. Many real-world implementations of the intelligent system of skin-inspired electronics in healthcare monitoring, artificial prosthetics via the creation of sensitive skin, and robot tactile perception are demonstrated. Combined with the technologies of wireless data transmission, self-powered supply modules, and signal-processing circuits, skin-inspired electronics are expected to achieve improved portability, multifunctional integration, on-site analysis, and in-time feedback. Herein, recent advances in skin-inspired electronics, its promising solutions to engineering challenges, and opinions on future research directions are discussed.