Transparent Electronic Skin Device Based on Microstructured Silver Nanowire Electrode

Abstract

Transparent, flexible electronic skin holds a wide range of applications in robotics, human-machine interfaces, artificial intelligence, prosthetics, and health monitoring. Silver nanowire are mechanically flexible and robust, which exhibit great potential in transparent and electric-conducting thin film. Herein, we report on a silver-nanowire spray-coating and electrode-microstructure replicating strategy to construct a transparent, flexible, and sensitive electronic skin device. The electronic skin device shows highly sensitive piezo-capacitance response to pressure. It is found that micropatterning the surface of dielectric layer polyurethane elastomer by replicating from microstructures of natural-existing surfaces such as lotus leaf, silk, and frosted glass can greatly enhance the piezo-capacitance performance of the device. The microstructured pressure sensors based on silver nanowire exhibit good transparency, excellent flexibility, wide pressure detection range (0–150 kPa), and high sensitivity (1.28 kPa−1).