Artificial Skin That Senses, and Stretches, Like the Real Thing
Stuff like this is one of the many reasons why I fucking LOVE science. Its how we get from what if to what works.
Bill Nye once said that "Science is the the best thing that humans have ever come up with, and when it isn't its science that is going to fix that" Cheers, Dodie
Artificial Skin That Senses, and Stretches, Like the Real Thing
South Korean and U.S. researchers have developed a stretchable material that senses touch, pressure, and moisture, and could be used to give artificial limbs feeling.
This electronics-laden glove is made up of layers of materials with stretchable gold and silicon sensors.
Some high-tech prosthetic limbs can be controlled by their owners, using nerves, muscles, or even the brain. However, there’s no way for the wearer to tell if an object is scalding hot, or about to slip out of the appendage’s grasp.
Materials that detect heat, pressure, and moisture could help change this by adding sensory capabilities to prosthetics. A group of Korean and U.S. researchers have now developed a polymer designed to mimic the elastic and high-resolution sensory capabilities of real skin.
The polymer is infused with dense networks of sensors made of ultrathin gold and silicon. The normally brittle silicon is configured in serpentine shapes that can elongate to allow for stretchability. Details of the work are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
Stretchable sensing materials have been in development for years (see “Stretchable Silicon” and “Making Stretchable Electronics”). But this is the most sensitive material yet, with as many as 400 sensors per square millimeter.
“If you have these sensors at high resolution across the finger, you can give the same tactile touch that the normal hand would convey to the brain,” says Roozbeh Ghaffari, who contributed to the research and heads advanced technology development at MC10, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, developing wearable products based on flexible, sensor-laden materials.
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