Printable and Stretchable Giant Magnetoresistive Sensors for Highly Compliant and Skin-Conformal Electronics

Highly compliant electronics, naturally conforming to human skin, represent a paradigm shift in the interplay with the surroundings. Solution-processable printing technologies are yet to be developed to comply with extreme requirements to mechanical conformability of on-skin appliances. Here, it is demonstrated that high-performance spintronic elements can be printed on ultrathin 3 μm thick polymeric foils enabling the mechanically imperceptible printed magnetoelectronics. Benefiting from their extreme compliancy, the printed magnetic-field sensors well adapt to the periodic buckling surface to be biaxially stretched over 100% of strain rate. They constitute the first example of printed and stretchable giant magnetoresistive sensors, revealing 2 orders of magnitude improvements in mechanical stability and sensitivity at small magnetic fields, compared to the state-of-the-art printed magnetoelectronics. The key aspect of this performance enhancement is the use of elastomeric triblock copolymers as a binder for the magnetosensitive paste. Even when bent to a radius of 16 μm, the sensors screen printed on ultrathin foils remain fully intact and possess unmatched sensitivity for printed magnetoelectronics of 3 T-1 in a low magnetic field of 0.88 mT. With this performance, the compliant printed sensors can be used as components of on-skin interactive electronics as it is demonstrated with a touchless control of virtual objects including zooming in and out of interactive maps and scrolling through electronic documents.