Biofuel-powered soft electronic skin with multiplexed and wireless sensing for human-machine interfaces

Existing electronic skin (e-skin) sensing platforms are equipped to monitor physical parameters using power from batteries or near-field communication. For e-skins to be applied in the next generation of robotics and medical devices, they must operate wirelessly and be self-powered. However, despite...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science robotics Vol. 5; no. 41
Main Authors: Yu, You, Nassar, Joanna, Xu, Changhao, Min, Jihong, Yang, Yiran, Dai, Adam, Doshi, Rohan, Huang, Adrian, Song, Yu, Gehlhar, Rachel, Ames, Aaron D, Gao, Wei
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 22.04.2020
Subjects:
Bioelectric Energy Sources
Biosensing Techniques - instrumentation
Biosensing Techniques - methods
Humans
Muscle Contraction
Nanoparticles
Robotics - instrumentation
Robotics - methods
Skin Temperature
Sweat
Wearable Electronic Devices
Wireless Technology
ISSN:2470-9476, 2470-9476
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:Existing electronic skin (e-skin) sensing platforms are equipped to monitor physical parameters using power from batteries or near-field communication. For e-skins to be applied in the next generation of robotics and medical devices, they must operate wirelessly and be self-powered. However, despite recent efforts to harvest energy from the human body, self-powered e-skin with the ability to perform biosensing with Bluetooth communication are limited because of lack of a continuous energy source and limited power efficiency. Here, we report a flexible and fully perspiration-powered integrated electronic skin (PPES) for multiplexed metabolic sensing in situ. The battery-free e-skin contains multimodal sensors and highly efficient lactate biofuel cells that use a unique integration of zero- to three-dimensional nanomaterials to achieve high power intensity and long-term stability. The PPES delivered a record-breaking power density of 3.5 milliwatt-centimeter for biofuel cells in untreated human body fluids (human sweat) and displayed a very stable performance during a 60-hour continuous operation. It selectively monitored key metabolic analytes (e.g., urea, NH , glucose, and pH) and the skin temperature during prolonged physical activities and wirelessly transmitted the data to the user interface using Bluetooth. The PPES was also able to monitor muscle contraction and work as a human-machine interface for human- prosthesis walking.
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ISSN:2470-9476
2470-9476
DOI:10.1126/scirobotics.aaz7946