Magnetic e-skins enabled somatic and touchless interactive devices

Humans skin provide perceptions of the temperature of objects, strain and pressure on skin, friction for holding objects, which help humans interact very precisely with unstructured surroundings [1]. Electronic skins [2-4] allow for the realization of similar sensing functions and also having the possibility of integrating other sensing functions beyond humans, for example, touchless feeling. Very recently we demonstrated magnetosensitive e-skins, which is an important step towards the realization of artificial magnetoception for humans [5,6].
Here, we present a magnetic e-skin that not only has the ability to detect the position and movement of magnetic objects in a touchless mode but also is sensitive to mechanical forces. The magnetic skin is a stack of a magnetoresistive (MR) sensor layer and a surface-pyramid-structured magnetic foil. The MR sensor of the magnetic skin is sensitive to the surrounding magnetic field change. When the surface of the target object is fixed with a magnet, the magnetic e-skin will have the ability to detect the distance change between itself and the target object in a touchless mold. Furthermore, when a pressure is applied on the surface of the magnetic e-skin, the induced distance change between the MR sensor and the magnetic foil will also result in the resistance change of the MR sensor. As a result, this magnetic e-skin also has the ability to detect the pressure change applied on its surface in a touch mold (somatic interaction). This multi-functional magnetic e-skin will hold a great promise for the realization of advanced humanoid robots, biomedical prostheses, and surgical electronic gloves.

1. A. Zimmerman, et al. Science 346, 950 (2014).
2. T. Someya, et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 101, 9966 (2004).
3. Z. Ma, et al. Science 333, 830 (2011).
4. Z. Bao, et al. Adv. Mater. 25, 5997 (2013).
5. M. Melzer, et al, Nat. Commun. 6, 6080 (2015).
6. D. Makarov, et al., Appl. Phys. Rev. 3, 011101 (2016).