Skin-Inspired High-Performance Active-Matrix Circuitry for Multimodal User-Interaction

Artificial electronic skin (e-skin), a network of mechanically flexible sensors which can wrap irregular surfaces conformally and quantify various stimuli sensitively, is potentially useful in healthcare monitoring and human-machine interaction (HMI). Although various approaches have mimicked the structures and functions of the human skin, challenges remain with high-density integration, super sensitivity, and multi-functionality. A multimodal and comfortable skin-inspired active-matrix circuitry is reported here with high pixel density (>100 cm^–2) based on all 2D materials, which exhibits excellent performance to detect both mechanical interactions and humidity variations. The ultra-high sensitivity (>400 and ≈ 10⁴ for strain and humidity sensing, respectively), long-term stability (>1000 cycles), and rapid response time for every pixel can fulfill simultaneous multi-stimulus sensing. Accordingly, a respiratory monitor is constructed to realize healthcare monitoring through observing the human breath frequency, intensity, and humidity in real-time. Moreover, the multimodal e-skin breaks through shackles of the contact sensor medium for HMI. 3D strain and humidity spatial mapping can reflect object location information even without contact, avoiding cross-infection of viruses effectively between users during the COVID-19 pandemic. The reported e-skin will broaden applications for future healthcare and human–machine interactive devices.