Fully integrated pressure-controlled electrochromic E-skins

Abstract

As the fundamental function of skins, tactile sensibility has been widely studied in the bionic electronic field or electronic skin (E-skin) field and various high performance pressure/strain sensors have been reported. Furthermore, to achieve advanced functions of skins such as sensibility to multiple stimuli, responsivity to stimuli and so on, the integration of multi-functional devices is the prime aspect of the E-skin field. For mimicking the natural skin response of pressing-to-coloring, here we introduced a pressure controlled electrochromic multi-layered device which fully integrated pressure-sensing and color-changing functions in a vertical assembly. Both the electrochromic layer and novel broad resistance variation pressure sensitive layer not only exhibit excellent performance in separated modules but also realized a promising skin response without peripheral circuits in the integrated device. Further in a fabricated 4 × 4 multi-pixel matrix E-skin system, each pixel unit can be independently controlled by pressure and also indicates the pressure exertion point by color variation. The matrix E-skin device with impressive flexibility shows broad application potential in health monitoring, smart robotic devices and human–machine interfacial applications.