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Abstract The dissimilarity of material composition in existing stretchable electronics and biological organisms is a key bottleneck, still yet to be resolved, toward seamless integration between stretchable electronics and biological species. For instance, human or animal tissues and skins are fully made out of soft polymer species, while existing stretchable electronics are composed of rigid inorganic materials, either purely or partially. Soft stretchable electronics fully made out of polymeric materials with intrinsic softness and stretchability are sought after and therefore proposed to address this technical challenge. Here, rubbery electronics and sensors fully made out of stretchable polymeric materials including all‐polymer rubbery transistors, sensors, and sensory skin, which have similar material composition to biology, are reported. The fabricated all‐polymer rubbery transistors exhibit field‐effect mobility of 1.11 cm2V‐1s‐1and retain their transistor performance even under mechanical stretch of 30%. In addition, all‐polymer rubbery strain and temperature sensors are demonstrated with high gauge factor and good temperature sensing capability. Based on these all‐polymer rubbery electronics, an active‐matrix multiplexed sensory skin on a robotic hand is demonstrated to illustrate one of the applications.
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This content will become publicly available on December 1, 2025
Autonomous self-healing supramolecular polymer transistors for skin electronics
Abstract Skin-like field-effect transistors are key elements of bio-integrated devices for future user-interactive electronic-skin applications. Despite recent rapid developments in skin-like stretchable transistors, imparting self-healing ability while maintaining necessary electrical performance to these transistors remains a challenge. Herein, we describe a stretchable polymer transistor capable of autonomous self-healing. The active material consists of a blend of an electrically insulating supramolecular polymer with either semiconducting polymers or vapor-deposited metal nanoclusters. A key feature is to employ the same supramolecular self-healing polymer matrix for all active layers, i.e., conductor/semiconductor/dielectric layers, in the skin-like transistor. This provides adhesion and intimate contact between layers, which facilitates effective charge injection and transport under strain after self-healing. Finally, we fabricate skin-like self-healing circuits, including NAND and NOR gates and inverters, both of which are critical components of arithmetic logic units. This work greatly advances practical self-healing skin electronics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2047689
- PAR ID:
- 10582543
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 15
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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