Fatigue-free artificial ionic skin toughened by self-healable elastic nanomesh.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35906238.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-32140-3 and PMC identifier 9338060.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Robust ionic sensing materials that are both fatigue-resistant and self-healable like human skin are essential for soft electronics and robotics with extended service life. However, most existing self-healable artificial ionic skins produced on the basis of network reconfiguration suffer from a low fatigue threshold due to the easy fracture of low-energy amorphous polymer chains with susceptible crack propagation. Here we engineer a fatigue-free yet fully healable hybrid ionic skin toughened by a high-energy, self-healable elastic nanomesh, resembling the repairable nanofibrous interwoven structure of human skin. Such a design affords a superhigh fatigue threshold of 2950 J m<sup>-2</sup> while maintaining skin-like compliance, stretchability, and strain-adaptive stiffening response. Moreover, nanofiber tension-induced moisture breathing of ionic matrix leads to a record-high strain-sensing gauge factor of 66.8, far exceeding previous intrinsically stretchable ionic conductors. This concept creates opportunities for designing durable ion-conducting materials that replicate the unparalleled combinatory properties of natural skins more precisely.
Medical subject headings
- Nanofibers
- Skin, Artificial