A Bioinspired Mineral Hydrogel as a Self‐Healable, Mechanically Adaptable Ionic Skin for Highly Sensitive Pressure Sensing

TLDR

Artificial skin‑like materials are increasingly studied for AI, wearables, and soft robotics, yet replicating human skin’s unique mechanical and sensory properties remains difficult. This work develops a bioinspired mineral hydrogel to create a mechanically adaptable ionic skin sensor. The hydrogel is fabricated into a capacitive sensor that exploits its viscoelastic properties. The resulting sensor is compliant, self‑healable, and can detect subtle pressures such as finger touch, motion, or small water droplets, offering potential for AI, human‑machine interaction, healthcare, and wearable devices, and advancing next‑generation intelligent skin.

Abstract

In the past two decades, artificial skin-like materials have received increasing research interests for their broad applications in artificial intelligence, wearable devices, and soft robotics. However, profound challenges remain in terms of imitating human skin because of its unique combination of mechanical and sensory properties. In this work, a bioinspired mineral hydrogel is developed to fabricate a novel type of mechanically adaptable ionic skin sensor. Due to its unique viscoelastic properties, the hydrogel-based capacitive sensor is compliant, self-healable, and can sense subtle pressure changes, such as a gentle finger touch, human motion, or even small water droplets. It might not only show great potential in applications such as artificial intelligence, human/machine interactions, personal healthcare, and wearable devices, but also promote the development of next-generation mechanically adaptable intelligent skin-like devices.