Color-shifting electronic skin could have wearable tech and prosthetic uses

While science has been able to replicate these abilities

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with artificial skin, the colour changes are often only visible to the naked eye when the material is put under huge mechanical strain.

Now, however, researchers in China have developed a new type of user-interactive electronic skin, with a colour change perceptible to the human eye, and achieved with a much-reduced level of strain. Their results could have applications in robotics, prosthetics and wearable technology.

Published today in the journal 2D Materials, the study from Tsinghua University in Beijing, employed flexible electronics made from graphene, in the form of a highly-sensitive resistive strain sensor, combined with a stretchable organic electrochromic device.

Lead author Dr Tingting Yang, from Tsinghua University, said: "We explored the substrate (underlying) effect on the electromechanical behaviour of graphene. To obtain good performance with a simple process and reduced cost, we designed a modulus-gradient structure to use graphene as both the highly sensitive strain-sensing element and the insensitive stretchable electrode of the ECD layer.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-color-shifting-electronic-skin-wearable-tech.html#jCp