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A soft, flexible pressure sensor is developed to measure hydrostatic pressure in the ocean environment, which can be potentially integrated with many platforms including diver equipment and marine animal tags for real-time pressure monitoring.

 

Cutting-edge technologies of stretchable, skin-mountable, and wearable electronics have attracted tremendous attention recently due to their very wide applications and promising performances. One direction of particular interest is to investigate novel properties in stretchable electronics by exploring multifunctional materials. Here, we report an integrated strain sensing system that is highly stretchable, rehealable, fully recyclable, and reconfigurable. This system consists of dynamic covalent thermoset polyimine as the moldable substrate and encapsulation, eutectic liquid metal alloy as the strain sensing unit and interconnects, and off-the-shelf chip components for measuring and magnifying functions. The device can be attached on different parts of the human body for accurately monitoring joint motion and respiration. Such a strain sensing system provides a reliable, economical, and ecofriendly solution to wearable technologies, with wide applications in health care, prosthetics, robotics, and biomedical devices. 

Wearable electronics can be integrated with the human body for monitoring physical activities and health conditions, for human-computer interfaces, and for virtual/augmented reality. We here report a multifunctional wearable electronic system that combines advances in materials, chemistry, and mechanics to enable superior stretchability, self-healability, recyclability, and reconfigurability. This electronic system heterogeneously integrates rigid, soft, and liquid materials through a low-cost fabrication method. The properties reported in this wearable electronic system can find applications in many areas, including health care, robotics, and prosthetics, and can benefit the well-being, economy, and sustainability of our society. 

Self-healable and recyclable materials and electronics can improve the reliability and repairability and can reduce environmental pollution; therefore, they promise very broad applications. In this study, we investigated the self-healing performance of dynamic covalent thermoset polyimine and its nanocomposites based on the dynamic covalent chemistry. Heat press was applied to two laminating films of polyimine and its nanocomposites to induce self-healing. The effects of heat press time, temperature, and load on the interfacial shear strength of the rehealed films were investigated. The results showed that increasing the heat press time, temperature, and load can significantly improve the interfacial shear strength and thus the self-healing effect. For polyimine nanocomposites, increasing the heat press time, temperature, and load led to the improved electrical conductivity of the rehealed films.