Physical sensors for skin‐inspired electronics

TLDR

Skin, the largest organ, is highly sensitive to external stimuli, and skin‑inspired electronics—wearable, implantable, and electronic skin—have emerged for healthcare and robotics, with physical sensors such as mechanical, temperature, humidity, and electrophysiological sensors as key components. This review systematically surveys recent advances in skin‑inspired mechanical, temperature, and humidity sensors. The review discusses sensor mechanisms, materials, device architectures, performance metrics, applications in health monitoring, disease diagnosis, and robotics, and highlights novel properties such as versatility, self‑healability, implantability, while outlining challenges and future directions. An illustrative image accompanies the review.

Abstract

Abstract Skin, the largest organ in the human body, is sensitive to external stimuli. In recent years, an increasing number of skin‐inspired electronics, including wearable electronics, implantable electronics, and electronic skin, have been developed because of their broad applications in healthcare and robotics. Physical sensors are one of the key building blocks of skin‐inspired electronics. Typical physical sensors include mechanical sensors, temperature sensors, humidity sensors, electrophysiological sensors, and so on. In this review, we systematically review the latest advances of skin‐inspired mechanical sensors, temperature sensors, and humidity sensors. The working mechanisms, key materials, device structures, and performance of various physical sensors are summarized and discussed in detail. Their applications in health monitoring, human disease diagnosis and treatment, and intelligent robots are reviewed. In addition, several novel properties of skin‐inspired physical sensors such as versatility, self‐healability, and implantability are introduced. Finally, the existing challenges and future perspectives of physical sensors for practical applications are discussed and proposed. image