The American physicists created the super-sensitive electronic skin, not conceding in durability and flexibility to its biological analog and possessing ultrahigh sensitivity to contacts and vibrations. For the last ten years, scientists have continued work on creating the material, repeating the properties of the skin of the person. In certain cases, they managed to achieve considerable success. So, in November 2012, a group of physicists under the leadership of Zhenan Bao from Stanford University created a super-flexible material capable of acting as a basis for synthetic skin.
In the new work, the physicists improved skin, increasing its sensitivity to contacts and vibrations some hundred times. For this purpose, scientists built in skin flexible transistors from slices of semiconducting silicon – the organic polymers connected to each other by microscopic electrodes from gold. The unique braided design allows them to maintain repeated extension and bend without damage. These transistors possess curious property and their conductivity changes at pressure appendix. Experimenting with slices of electronic skin, authors picked up such parameters of tension and current at which the device reacted even to the slightest changes in pressure.
Scientists worked on an invention to create a supersensitive pulse sensor whose thickness is no more than a medical plaster. According to physicists, their creation possesses a record for today’s sensitivity. It reacts to contacts compared to other polymeric sensors about 150 times better and by 20 times surpasses the champion in this sphere. It allows applying this material to the production of medical microsensors and skinning for pressure sensors on the extremities of robots.
