Three-dimensional Self-healable Touch Sensing Artificial Skin Device

Human skin is a unique functional material that perfectly covers body parts having various complicated shapes, spontaneously heals a mechanical damage, and senses a touch. E-skin devices have been actively researched, focusing on sensing functionality of a skin. However, most e-skin devices still have limitation in their shapes, and it is challenging issue of interest to realize multiple functionalities in one device as human skin does. Here, new artificial skin devices are demonstrated in application-oriented 3-dimensional shapes, which can sense exact touch location and heal mechanical damage spontaneously. Beyond the conventional film type e-skin devices, the artificial skin devices are fabricated in optimal 3-dimensional structures, via systematic material design and characterization of ion conductive self-healing hydrogel system and its extrusion-based 3D printing. The ring-shaped and fingertip-shaped artificial skin devices are successfully fabricated to fit perfectly on finger models, and shows lar...