Electronic Skins for Healthcare and Virtual Reality

Skin-interfaced electronics are becoming powerful tools for applications in human-machine interaction and digital capture of human movement and physiology, which offer promising perspectives in e-health applications. We report on microfabricated electronic skins prepared with silicone and liquid metal conductors. Based on a combination of soft lithography, directional patterning, thermal evaporation or spray coating of gallium, the soft technology enables a range of designs and geometries that can be used to form liquid metal-based stretchable electronic conductors. The versatility of the technology enables a palette of sensor designs that can offer transparency (T > 89%), large metallization density (2/5 μm line/gap), and high electromechanical performance (strain > 10 %, > 100k cycles). We will illustrate the technology capability demonstrating soft sensors for minimally invasive hand tracking, closed-loop soft actuation control and softness sensing.