Multifunctional Skin‐Inspired Flexible Sensor Systems for Wearable Electronics

Abstract

Skin‐inspired wearable devices hold great potentials in the next generation of smart portable electronics owing to their intriguing applications in healthcare monitoring, soft robotics, artificial intelligence, and human–machine interfaces. Despite tremendous research efforts dedicated to judiciously tailoring wearable devices in terms of their thickness, portability, flexibility, bendability as well as stretchability, the emerging Internet of Things demand the skin‐interfaced flexible systems to be endowed with additional functionalities with the capability of mimicking skin‐like perception and beyond. This review covers and highlights the latest advances of burgeoning multifunctional wearable electronics, primarily including versatile multimodal sensor systems, self‐healing material‐based devices, and self‐powered flexible sensors. To render the penetration of human‐interactive devices into global markets and households, economical manufacturing techniques are crucial to achieve large‐scale flexible systems with high‐throughput capability. The booming innovations in this research field will push the scientific community forward and benefit human beings in the near future.

Full text

Review
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Multifunctional Skin-Inspired Flexible Sensor Systems
for Wearable Electronics
Kaichen Xu, Yuyao Lu, and Kuniharu Takei*
DOI: 10.1002/admt.201800628
applications (e.g., soft robotics, medical
devices).[1–6] Despite state-of-the-art bulk-
based planar integrated-circuit devices,
their rigid and brittle nature gives rise to
the incompatibility with curvilinear and
soft human bodies, restricting the develop-
ment of newborn human-friendly interac-
tive electronics. In contrast, the bendable
and flexible wearable electronics could be
conformally attached onto human bodies
almost without discomfort and succeed in
performing a great deal of sensing func-
tionalities. Realization of such promising
goals requires the flexible sensor plat-
forms provided with crucial characteristics
of light weight, ultrathinness, superior
flexibility, stretchability, high sensitivity
as well as rapid response.[7–10] Inspired by
the perceptive features of human skins,
the wearable sensor systems are capable of
acquiring abundant information from the
external environment with the assistance
of sensing modules, such as pressure sensors, strain sensors,
temperature sensors, etc.[11] A typical example is their appli-
cation in prosthetics that could afford the capacity to perceive
touch or temperature for the disabled.[12] Additionally, the wear-
able sensor systems are able to identify physical or chemical
signals produced by the human body, providing promising
opportunities to evaluate health states.[5,13–15]
Conventional skin-like sensor platforms primarily comprise
one or two sensing modules, data processing units, and power
supplies. Their unitary functionality, however, cannot satisfy
the increasing demands of IoTs. Recently, the rapid advances
in novel sensing materials, fabrication strategies, and inno-
vative electronic constitution contribute to the development
of versatile integration of multimodal sensors, which could
synchronously distinguish diverse stimuli from the complex
environment and monitor multiple vital signs from the human
body.[16,17] In spite of several attempts done in terms of such
multimodal sensor systems, one of the cumbersome issues
originates from the crosscoupling effect among different cat-
egories of signals simultaneously generated by various sensors.
Furthermore, the skin-like multiple sensor systems usually
suffer from the limited number of repeated use, resulting in
their high use-cost. The development of separable versatile
devices may address this issue with one layer realized by cost-
effective materials and fabrication manners for disposable use
and the other composed of relatively expensive components for
repeatable applications.[18] Additionally, the multiple bending or
Skin-inspired wearable devices hold great potentials in the next generation of
smart portable electronics owing to their intriguing applications in healthcare
monitoring, soft robotics, artificial intelligence, and human–machine inter-
faces. Despite tremendous research efforts dedicated to judiciously tailoring
wearable devices in terms of their thickness, portability, flexibility, bendability
as well as stretchability, the emerging Internet of Things demand the skin-
interfaced flexible systems to be endowed with additional functionalities
with the capability of mimicking skin-like perception and beyond. This review
covers and highlights the latest advances of burgeoning multifunctional
wearable electronics, primarily including versatile multimodal sensor sys-
tems, self-healing material-based devices, and self-powered flexible sensors.
To render the penetration of human-interactive devices into global markets
and households, economical manufacturing techniques are crucial to achieve
large-scale flexible systems with high-throughput capability. The booming
innovations in this research field will push the scientific community forward
and benefit human beings in the near future.
Dr. K. Xu, Y. Lu, Prof. K. Takei
Department of Physics and Electronics
Osaka Prefecture University Sakai
Osaka 599-8531, Japan
E-mail: takei@pe.osakafu-u.ac.jp
Prof. K. Takei
JST PRESTO
Kawaguchi, Saitama 332-0012, Japan
The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article
can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.201800628.
Flexible Wearable Sensors
1. Introduction
The everlasting pursuit of preferable human life propels the
ceaseless advances of intelligent community. In particular,
the burgeoning concept of Internet of Things (IoTs) is revolu-
tionizing the way we live our lives through active interaction
with smart network. As the kernel of IoTs, wearable electronic
skin (E-skin) devices take the predominant role in seamlessly
interfacing among surroundings and individuals by virtue of
integrated flexible sensor systems based on wireless network
connectivity. Huge efforts, in the past decade, have thus been
dedicated to developing versatile human-interactive devices via
imitating skin-like functions, such as tactile, humidity, or tem-
perature sensing capabilities, contributing to diverse intriguing
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stretching processes often lead to performance degradation of
flexible sensors, especially in harsh working environment, ena-
bling the inaccurate measurement of signals, and increasing
the electronic waste streams. Fortunately, the spontaneous
restorative nature of human skin inspires us to develop self-
healable materials as the backbone of the devices, allowing
the human–machine interfaces to self-repair upon damages
through nonautonomic or autonomic processes.[19] However,
the vast majority of current self-healable devices have the capa-
bility to be only partially self-healed, and most importantly, it
is still a formidable challenge to integrate functional multi-
modal sensors into the self-healable matrix. Another significant
aspect of flexible sensor systems lies in power modules, which
are usually bulky, rigid, and incompatible with the emerging
multifunctional E-skin systems. The promising alternative
strategy of flexible self-powered systems render the possibility
to concurrently drive a couple of sensors via harvesting the
ubiquitous energy from the structured environment or the
human body itself.[20] To realize the full potential of wearable
IoTs, it is critical to develop self-powered sensor patches that
simultaneously measure multiple physiological cues (e.g., car-
diac, sweat, respiratory) with high repeatability and accuracy. In
addition, the widespread application, especially in resource-lim-
ited environment, of the intelligent wearable sensors require
them to be realized over large scales with economic fabrication
approaches.[21] Particularly, the on-demand and multiple-spot
measurement of signals prompts the development of flexible
sensor arrays endowed with in vivo mapping capabilities.[22–24]
In this review, we present the latest advances of multifunc-
tional skin-inspired flexible wearable sensor platforms for
healthcare monitoring and soft robotic applications. First, the
recent successful demonstrations of strain/pressure, tempera-
ture, chemical and optical sensors are briefly overviewed and
their challenges are critically analyzed. The second section high-
lights the emerging multifunctional wearable sensor systems
in detail, categorized into three main subfields: i) integration
of multimodal sensors, ii) self-healing material-based flexible
devices, and iii) self-powered flexible sensors (Figure 1). Addi-
tionally, the large-scale flexible sensor systems are described,
aiming at permeating into global markets and households.
Finally, the future trends of multifunctional skin-like sensing
systems are provided.
2. Various Categories of Flexible Sensors
2.1. Strain and Pressure Sensors
Pressures sensors, also known as tactile/strain sensors, have
attracted a number of research attentions in recent years, espe-
cially for skin-based electronic devices.[32–36] Owing to their
distinct merits of flexibility, durability, biocompatibility as well
as lightweight, flexible strain, and pressure sensors are able
to be tightly adhered onto the human skin for the real-time
monitoring of physiological health, such as heart rate or res-
piratory rhythm. To realize the high-performance skin-inspired
sensors, a great diversity of highly sensitive sensor systems
have been reported through rationally engineering functional
nanomaterials or hybrid micro/nanostructures based on
effective transduction mechanisms through converting external
stimuli into electrical signals.[33,34,37–40] These transduction
methods generally include piezoresistivity, piezoelectricity,
and capacitance. For the detailed illustration of these mecha-
nisms, interested readers may refer to the excellent review by
Rim et al.[41] Among them, piezoresistivity is considered as the
most common one owing to their comparatively facile system
designs and readout mechanisms via transducing force vari-
ations into resistance change. In the past decade, enormous
Kaichen Xu received his
Ph.D. degree from the
Department of Electrical
& Computer Engineering
at National University of
Singapore in 2018 and
his B.Sc. from Nanjing
University of Posts and
Telecommunications in 2014.
Currently, he is a postdoctoral
fellow at Osaka Prefecture
University in Japan under
Prof. Kuniharu Takei. His research interests include multi-
functional flexible sensors for soft robotic applications and
healthcare monitoring.
Yuyao Lu received her
M.Sc. degree from the
Department of Chemistry
at National University of
Singapore in 2018 and
her B.Sc. from Suzhou
University of Science
and Technology in 2017.
Currently, she is a research
assistant at Osaka Prefecture
University in Japan under
Prof. Kuniharu Takei. She
is focused on the synthesis of novel nanomaterials for
flexible sensors.
Kuniharu Takei received his
Ph.D. degree from Toyohashi
University of Technology in
Japan in 2009. After working
as a postdoctoral fellow at
the University of California,
Berkeley from 2009 to 2013,
he joined the faculty of Osaka
Prefecture University in Japan.
Currently he is an associated
professor in the Department
of Physics and Electronics.
His contributions are to develop multifunctional high-
performance flexible and wearable devices using printable
inorganic materials.
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efforts have been concentrated in improving the parameters of
wearable strain devices, such as sensitivity, gauge factor (GF),
linearity, hysteresis, response, and recovery time as well as
overshoot behavior.[42] Nevertheless, other device performances
should also be taken into concern if state-of-the-art flexible pres-
sure sensors are expected. For instance, it is hard to accurately
measure the pressure under dynamic deformation because of
the variable sensing performance induced by mechanical defor-
mation. To address this challenge, Someya and co-workers
unprecedentedly developed a bending-insensitive, ultraflexible,
and resistive-type pressure sensor with composite nanofibers as
building blocks.[43] Significantly, the sensor properties remain
unvaried even though the bending radius of the sensor drops
down to 80 µm owing to the thin substrate (thickness: <2 µm)
as well as entangled nanostructure (Figure 2a). This results in
precisely measuring the distribution of the normal pressure on
3D surfaces and the performance variation is negligibly small
before and after wrapping devices around an injection needle
(Figure 2b–d). In the following part, two emerging categories
of wearable strain devices are briefly overviewed regarding to
memorable tactile sensors as well as acceleration sensors.
The majority of skin-inspired strain sensors are unable to
retain tactile information after removing external force. To
enhance the versatility of state-of-art E-skin based systems, the
wearable pressure sensors coupled with memory character-
istic have been demonstrated by several research groups.[46–48]
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Figure 1. Toward multifunctional E-skin systems. Multimodal sensor systems: stretchable matrix networks. Reproduced with permission.[16] Copyright
2018, Nature Publishing Group. Wearable health monitoring patch. Reproduced with permission.[18] Copyright 2016, American Association for the
Advancement of Science. Flexible integrated sensing array. Reproduced with permission.[25] Copyright 2016, Nature Publishing Group. Self-healing
material-based devices: integrated self-healable electronic skin system. Reproduced with permission.[26] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group. Self-
healing liquid metal–elastomer composite. Reproduced with permission.[27] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group. Autonomic–intrinsic conductive
self-healing hydrogels. Reproduced with permission.[28] Copyright 2017, John Wiley & Sons. Self-powered flexible sensors: self-powered integrated strain
sensor. Reproduced with permission.[29] Copyright 2018, Elsevier B.V. Self-powered ultraflexible sensor. Reproduced with permission.[30] Copyright
2018, Nature Publishing Group. Self-powered triboelectric gesture textile. Reproduced with permission.[31] Copyright 2018, American Chemical Society.

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Similar to synapses among neurons, the flexible memory
sensor could be applied to imitate the brain’s memory function-
ality to store analogue value.[49] For example, through replacing
the bottom electrodes of pressure sensors with top electrodes
arrays in memory devices, flexible haptic memory devices are
realized.[46] The applied strain can be maintained for more than
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Figure 2. a) Tested pressure response of the device in the bent state and response of the device fabricated on a 1.4 µm thick PET substrate. b) Photo-
graph of an integrated sensor array attached to the surface of a soft balloon, to which a pressure was applied by a pinching motion. c) Measured pressure
data distribution under complex bending, showing no pressure signal from deformation such as wrinkling. d) Photograph of a sensor wrapped around an
injection needle. a–d) Reproduced with permission.[43] Copyright 2016, Nature Publishing Group. e) Tactile touch sensor and programming mechanism
of FGRAM without (left) and with (right) applying a touch. f) Photo of the fabricated device and demonstration image of the e-wallpaper. g) Memorized
touch information array 1) before touch, 2) 2 h after touch, and 3) after erasing the touch information. e–g) Reproduced with permission.[44] Copyright
2017, Royal Society of Chemistry. Photos of kirigami electrodes h) before and i) after stretching. j) FEM simulation of the kirigami structure with a 2 mm
stretching displacement (top) and equivalent circuit for the resistance measurements of kirigami electrodes under stretching (bottom). Normalized
resistance changes for k) different L values and l) beam width. h–l) Reproduced with permission.[45] Copyright 2017, John Wiley & Sons.

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one week with little decay. Furthermore, Casula et al. demon-
strated an organic, nonvolatile resistive memory device based
on organic pressure-sensitive elements.[48] High retention time
with at least 6 months is achieved. However, realization of a
practical and commercial flexible pressure sensor-memory still
faces enormous challenges. Takei et al. reported a flexible tac-
tile touch memory array for electronic wallpaper (e-wallpaper)
based on a flexible resistive-change nonvolatile floating gate
random access memory (FGRAM) array (Figure 2e).[44] Due to
its promising capability to realize integrated circuits on mac-
roscale substrates, InGaZnO thin-film transistors (TFTs) are
employed as FGRAMs for flexible pressure sensors array. The
value of such an e-wallpaper, for example, lies in its ability to
memorize touch information like a message board (Figure 2f,g).
Without a touch, the program voltage is disconnected with the
gate electrode of the FGRAM. After applying a tactile touch
onto the sensor, the program voltage is supplied to the FGRAM
with the positive shift of threshold voltage. It is demonstrated
that after two hours by applying the pressure using three pens
over the device, the information is still maintained, which can
be refreshed by triggering −15 V erasing voltage. Through the
incorporation of temperature sensors, the room temperature
can be memorized and controlled.
Until now, most of the skin-inspired wearable strain sen-
sors are used to monitor heartbeat or respiration rates, which
are highly associated with illness. Another kind of equally
vital applications of wearable strain sensors are their capa-
bility to monitor physical movement and motion. Despite the
immense advances in monitoring health conditions by diverse
wearable sensors, the detection of health information alone
allows no sufficient analyses to fully predict or diagnose dis-
eases. As a matter of fact, the recorded health conditions, such
as skin temperature or electrocardiogram (ECG), are strongly
related to the subject’s physical activity. Simultaneous detec-
tion of human activity/motion is thus of paramount impor-
tance. Typical examples of motion sensors rely on the flex-
ible strain sensors attached onto the fingers or knee joints to
monitor their movement.[50–54] Nevertheless, limb movements
are not always correlated with overall physical activities, hence
resulting in probably inaccurate diagnosis in combination with
the recorded health data. Inspired by the kirigami structure,
a three-axis acceleration sensor was developed composed of
four beams integrated with three strain sensors in response
to changes in structural strain (Figure 2h–j).[18,45] The intro-
duction of kirigami structure hinders the stretching induced
mechanical and electrical failures and meanwhile improves
the comfort for wearers. It is found that the threshold accelera-
tion of the motion sensor is about 5–12 m s−2, determined by
the direction of acceleration.[18] Through the rational tuning of
structural dimensions, a sufficiently low acceleration threshold
less than 3 m s−2 is obtained at the beam length (L) of 10.7 mm
and width (W) of 0.35 mm, enabling its possibility to detect
light human activity, such as small steps (Figure 2k,l).[45] To
make the acceleration sensor adaptable to a wide range of
people, the further device developments are demanded to
obtain desired detectable threshold (DThreshold) based on the fol-
lowing relationship
DLW/
Threshold
2.7
∝
(1)
Through the incorporation of such motion/acceleration sen-
sors into more functional flexible devices, the simultaneous
monitoring of physical activity, skin temperature, ECG, UV
exposure, etc., could be realized.
2.2. Temperature Sensors
Body temperature, as a basic index in physiology, is a signifi-
cant indicator of many symptoms, such as insomnia, fever,
depression, or metabolic functionality, providing abundantly
useful medical diagnostic information. Real-time and accu-
rate measurement of localized temperature changes is very
important. Traditional medical examination generally relies
on periodic measurement of body temperature by thermom-
eters. In contrast, the emerging wearable temperature meas-
urement systems can be conformally attached onto human
skins with minimal user awareness for continuous healthcare
monitoring.[55] High sensitivity, fast response, good reliability,
wide-working temperature range as well as light weight of
the flexible temperature sensors is highly desired. This real-
time health condition monitoring may find unusual change
of condition in advance related with some signals for disease.
Real-time monitoring increases the chance to find this sign
compared to the conventional periodic measurements. Most
flexible temperature sensors are in operation based on the
change of resistance, which is usually implemented by homo-
geneously spreading conductive fillers into insulative polymer
matrix or heterogeneously creating temperature-sensitive con-
ductors on flexible substrates. For example, Chen et al. reported
a soft thermal sensor through the combination of single-wall
carbon nanotubes composed of carboxyl groups with poly-
mers based on hydrogen bonds.[56] The flexible thermal sensor
is endowed with superior mechanical adaptability due to rich
noncovalent hydrogen bonds of polymers. Takei et al. demon-
strated a temperature sensor by mixing a conductive poly(3,4-
ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS,
1.3 wt% in water) (Sigma Aldrich, USA) and a carbon nano-
tube (CNT) paste (SWeNT, USA) with a 10:1 weight ratio, fol-
lowed by printing on flexible substrates.[57,58] The temperature
sensitivity of around 0.61% °C−1 is obtained, which is slightly
better than that of Pt thermal sensor.[59] To further increase the
sensitivity and improve response time, it has been found that
positive temperature coefficient (PTC) composites are alterna-
tive candidates as the backbone materials to construct flexible
temperature sensors with prominent capacity to exhibit six
orders of magnitude of only 5 °C or less.[60] High resolution of
0.1 °C or less near body temperatures and fast response time
of 100 ms are achieved, which realizes the measurement of
dynamic change of temperature in the lung during very quick
artificial respiration.
Besides the criteria of flexible temperature sensors men-
tioned above, other properties should also be taken into
considerations, such as response to subtle change of working
environment, cross-sensitivities (e.g., strain) or scalable sen-
sors array with mechanical stretchability. Several attempts have
been made to address these issues. For instance, via integrating
the temperature sensitive material with a semipermeable poly-
urethane film, a stretchable and breathable temperature sensor
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was proposed with the capability to reflect subtle temperature
change caused by water dropping and wind blowing.[61] To cir-
cumvent the cross-sensitivity and accurately measure electrical
output of stretchable temperature sensors, Zhu et al. demon-
strated static and dynamic differential voltage readout strate-
gies, leading to the absolute inaccuracy of the output within
±1 °C under uniaxial strains, although this inaccuracy could
be further improved in future (Figure 3a,b).[62] The stable
functionality of temperature sensors allows the precisely real-
time monitoring during rapid stretching cycles. In addition,
the increasing demand of dynamically monitoring tempera-
tures on multipoints of curved surfaces is in need of scalable
temperature sensor network.[63] The detailed illustration will be
presented in Section 4.
Conventional skin-based temperature sensors are targeted
at measuring the skin temperature. Such sensors, however, are
usually affected by ambient conditions, such as humidity or
ambient temperature, resulting in imprecisely acquiring health
status of human bodies. In order to measure the true body tem-
perature accurately, the measurement of core-body temperature
is one of the excellent strategies. Javey and co-workers invented
a wearable “earable” device, which can be worn on the ear to
realize real-time monitoring of core-body temperature through
the tympanum based on an infrared sensor (Figure 3c).[64] The
experimental results indicate that with the rise of environmental
temperature, the core-body temperature almost keeps constant,
while the skin temperature is strongly affected (Figure 3d,e).
In addition, during the exercise, the core-body temperature
increases steadily up to around 37 °C, while the skin temper-
ature quickly rises up to nearly 35 °C before dropping back
down at the end of biking. The drop in the skin temperature
is probably attributed to perspiration during the exercise. The
results of the earable core-body temperature sensor is in excel-
lent agreement with that measured by a commercial tympanic
sensor, indicating its promising roles in precisely real-time
monitoring individual’s health and physiological state.
2.3. Chemical Sensors
Flexible chemical sensors are capable of in situ monitoring of
the human health via rapid detection of biomarkers from the
human body. Different from the majority of flexible sensors that
aim to gain the information of physical activities or vital signs,
chemical sensors provide a more straightforward manner for
noninvasive personal health monitoring at the molecular level.
In the past several years, a plurality of body fluids have been
employed for healthcare diagnostics by flexible wearable chem-
ical sensors, such as saliva, breath, blood, sweat, etc.[13] For
example, a bio-interfaced sensing platform composed of hybrid
graphene/electrode/silk structure was reported for chemical
and biological sensing.[65] Via transferring the flexible sen-
sors onto tooth enamel, the flexible sensor is able to recognize
H. pylori cells in human saliva with a detection limit of around
100 cells. Nevertheless, the acquired information of saliva sen-
sors is usually influenced by dietary habit, providing restricted
physiological insight. Regarding to breath analyses, rich volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) are contained in exhaled breath,
which affords an effective route for safe screening. Kahn et al.
demonstrated a flexible nanoparticle (GNP) sensor that could
collect resistance data in real-time under bending and exposure
thanks to the good response of sensor varying with the type
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Figure 3. a) Optical photograph showing the conformability of the temperature sensing circuit. The photograph highlights the skin-like nature of the
intrinsically stretchable temperature sensor attached on the medial aspect of the wrist (left), and laminated to the skin during wrist bending (right).
b) Demonstration of the stretchable temperature sensor attached to the knuckle area of a flexible rubber prosthetic hand. The temperature sensor
showed stable functionality during repeated bending. a,b) Reproduced with permission.[62] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group. On-body tests
using the 3D printed earable smart device. c) Schematic diagram of the smart device operation. d) Skin and core body temperatures as a function of
environmental temperature. e) Skin and core body temperature change during biking. c–e) Reproduced with permission.[64] Copyright 2017, American
Chemical Society.

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of VOCs and their concentrations.[66] This enables the exami-
nation of breath VOCs for the diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
However, the biomarkers exhaled from breath may suffer
from the interference from humidity or contamination from
ambient air. Additionally, blood diagnostics can be performed
by implantable sensors, but it is hard to realize noninvasive
measurement based on wearable platforms. On the contrary,
sweat-based sensors present various advantages over other body
bio-fluids sensing because of their on-demand and continuous
monitoring capabilities at one’s convenience.
As an important category of bio-fluid, sweat contains abun-
dant biochemical markers (e.g., glucose, lactate, sodium, and
potassium), which are highly associated with our physiological
states. The timely, accurate and sensitive monitoring of sweat
ensures early diagnostics of relevant diseases. Current research
focuses on flexible sweat sensors in developing effective sweat
sampling solutions and high-performance sensitive sensing
systems on flexible matrix. Various wearable platforms have
been demonstrated, such as temporary tattoos, patches, or
wrist-bands.[69] Among a variety of architectures for wearable
sweat sensors, microfluidic-based sweat systems are one of the
most promising strategies owing to their shorter sweat sam-
pling and filling times.[67,70–73] Koh et al. developed a stretch-
able microfluidic system with the capability to be intimately
and robustly bonded to the skin surface (Figure 4a–c).[67] The
sweat could be harvested from pores on the skin surface and
then delivered to different channels and reservoirs, rendering
the colorimetric detection of sweat loss, pH, lactate, chloride as
well as glucose concentrations. Furthermore, a skin-mounted
microanalytical flow system was reported via integrating of
an innovative microfluidic configuration and electrochemical
flow detectors.[71] However, most of these wearable sweat sen-
sors rely on exercise to extract sufficient amount of sweat from
the skin surface, preventing their universal applications. An
electrochemically enhanced iontophoresis interface could sur-
mount this issue through incorporation into a wearable sweat
sensing system (Figure 4d,e).[68,74] The sweating could be stimu-
lated locally via iontophoresis, allowing the medical screenings
under sedentary circumstances. Although enormous advances
have been made in skin-like wearable sweat sensors, only small
molecules or ions have been extracted and measured by in situ
monitoring, while the excretion of larger biomolecules such
as proteins, DNA, RNA, etc., from sweat have not been clearly
comprehended, which may demand related biologists to be
involved in this research field.
2.4. Optical Sensors
Optical sensors are a wide range of devices with the capability
to detect a variety of light properties, such as wavelength, fre-
quency, intensity, or polarization. One type of devices relies
on the conversion of light with broad bandwidth into electrical
signals.[75–77] The performance of the optical sensors can be
Adv. Mater. Technol. 2019, 4, 1800628
Figure 4. a) Schematic illustration of an epidermal microfluidic sweat monitoring device and an enlarged image of the integrated near-field com-
munication (NFC) system (inset). b) Optical image of a fabricated device mounted on the forearm. c) Colorimetric detection reservoirs that enable
determination of different analytes. a–c) Reproduced with permission.[67] Copyright 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
d) Iontophoresis relies on topical current application for local sweat stimulation. Current is applied between pilogels, or hydrogels containing the sweat-
stimulating drug pilocarpine. e) Reverse iontophoresis uses current application to electro-osmotically drive interstitial fluid through the epidermis to
the skin surface. d,e) Reproduced with permission.[68] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group.

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evaluated by various indicators, including selectivity, sensitivity
as well as response time.[78] In healthcare diagnostics, one of
the most popular optical sensors are based on photodetectors,
which are applied for pulse oximeters generally composed of
two light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with different emission wave-
lengths and a photodetector. The LEDs are usually placed on
a thin part of the patient’s body and the light transmitted or
reflected in the tissue is then detected by the photodetector,
which is placed beside or opposite the LEDs (reflected or trans-
mitted modes). Currently, the commercial pulse oximeters
are composed of bulky and rigid integrated circuits with high
large-area scaling cost, limiting their practical applications in
noninvasively measuring human pulse and tissue oxygenation,
especially when the wearer is on the move. The development
of high-performance flexible optoelectronic systems thus play a
vital role in healthcare monitoring.
Driven by the aforementioned challenges, Arias and co-
workers demonstrated an organic optoelectronic pulse oximetry
sensor on a plastic substrate, consisting of green (532 nm)
and red (626 nm) organic LEDs (OLEDs) coupled with organic
photodiodes (OPDs) at the transmitted mode.[79] Through the
processes of systole and diastole, arterial oxygen saturation
can be calculated due to different light absorptivities of oxy-
hemoglobin (HbO2) and deoxy-hemoglobin (Hb) at red and
green wavelengths. 1% error for pulse rate and 2% error for
oxygenation are achieved when comparing the flexible organic
sensor with the inorganic sensor. Nevertheless, the relatively
thick plastic substrate with high Young’s modulus in this work
cannot enable the devices to be seamlessly laminated onto the
skin imperceptibly. Significantly, an ultrathin and ultraflexible
reflective pulse oximeter comprising polymer LEDs (PLEDs)
and an organic photodetector (OPD) was successfully developed
by Someya and co-workers.[80] To realize such a smart E-skin
system, a high-quality ultrathin passivation layer composed
of five alternating inorganic (SiON) and organic (Parylene)
layers by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is
employed for their ultraflexible organic optoelectronic devices.
The total thickness of the devices is only 3 µm, including the
substrate and encapsulation layer. After laminating the pulse
oximeter on a finger, the oxygen concentration of blood is
measured (Figure 5a–c). It is envisioned that such ultrathin
flexible optical sensors can be directly laminated on organs for
the blood oxygen level monitoring during and after surgery.
Furthermore, in order to drive the light into a deeper penetra-
tion skin depth and pick up signals from larger arterioles, near
infrared (NIR) light with low attenuation is considered to be
more suitable for skin-based devices for health monitoring.[81,82]
Another category of optical sensors is plasmon-enhanced
optical sensing, which is generally built from judiciously tai-
lored plasmonic nanostructures, rendering the enhancement
or modulation of optical signals possible, such as spectral-shifts
based plasmonic sensors,[84] plasmon-enhanced fluorescence
sensors,[85] and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sen-
sors, etc.[86] Particularly, SERS has attracted intensive research
attentions due to its capability to provide fingerprint infor-
mation of analytes with narrow spectral peaks.[87] To achieve
high-performance SERS substrates, it is crucial to deliberately
engineer uniform large-scale plasmonic nanostructures with
high-density of “hot-spots,” allowing the generation of enhanced
electric fields as large as possible.[88–92] Huge efforts, in the past
decades, thus have been dedicated to exploiting versatile SERS
platforms by rational chemical syntheses or advanced litho-
graphic routes in aqueous solutions or on rigid substrates.[93–99]
Especially, in recent years, the SERS systems constructed
from soft/flexible materials have drawn increasing atten-
tions owing to their distinct merits for real-time point-of-care
(POC) diagnostics. Currently, the flexible SERS platforms are
primarily classified into i) actively tunable SERS, ii) swab-
sampling strategy as well as iii) in situ SERS monitoring
means.[83,100,101] Among them, the in situ SERS detection based
on the flexible substrates is considered as the most promising
approach, which is performed by first conformally attaching
the flexible SERS substrates onto objective surfaces of interest,
followed by the excitation of incident photons and collection
of Raman signals from the back side of the SERS substrates.
Until now, a diversity of flexible substrates have been applied
for in-situ SERS detection, such as PDMS,[102] PMMA,[103]
polyethylene terephthalate (PET),[104] polyethylene (PE),[105]
poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP),[106] paper,[107] adhesive tape,[108]
as well as nanowires.[109] The conventional methods to prepare
active nanostructures on flexible and transparent substrates
rely on depositing nanoparticles by physical or chemical routes.
Particularly, the implementation of uniform nanostructures
generally involves the state-of-art lithographic techniques and
then pattern transfer processes. To explore a facile, yet efficient
method to fabricate homogeneous nanostructures on the flex-
ible substrates over a large area for the in situ SERS detection,
Xu et al. developed a biocompatible and biodegradable SERS
substrates via irreversibly and uniaxially stretching metal
deposited flexible poly (
ε
-caprolactone) (PCL) surface plasmon
resonance (SPR) film as wearable sensors for in situ detection
of analytes (Figure 5d).[83] The PCL film, as an excellent flexible,
biodegradable, and biocompatible material with good trans-
parency (≈90%) and temperature stability (9.62%), is for the
first time employed as a building block for flexible SERS sub-
strates. After the deposition of Ag film, the composite film after
stretching exhibits surprising phenomena: three dimensional
and periodic wave-shaped microribbons array embedded with a
high density of nanogaps functioning as hot-spots at an average
gap size of 20 nm and nanogrooves array along the stretching
direction (Figure 5e). The stretched polymer surface plasmon
resonance film gives rise to more than 10 times signal enhance-
ment in comparison with that of the unstretched composite
film due to the localized fields within the nanogaps and nano-
grooves (Figure 5f). The ultrathin flexible SPR film (≈10 µm)
affords an intriguing way to not only in situ detect molecules
on curved surfaces, but also noninvasively monitor glucose
level and other intractable diseases through the swab-sampling
of fresh human tears for healthcare monitoring (Figure 5g–i).
3. Multifunctional Skin-Interfaced
Wearable Devices
The vision of human-interactive wearable devices is to imitate
or even surmount the perceptive capabilities of human skin,
such as temperature and tactile sensing properties. Additional
functionalities, such as chemical or optical sensing capabilities,
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are also considered to be incorporated beyond skin functionali-
ties. In order to reach this ambitious goal, the further study of
skin-interfaced systems is encouraged to be transited from “one
system = one result” to “one system = several results.” This will
endow the health-monitoring systems with plentiful function-
alities to acquire diverse vital signs (temperature, heart rate,
respiratory rhythm, oximeters, physical activities, etc.) within
only a single device.[5] Furthermore, one of the most intriguing
properties of human skin is its natural ability to recover from
injury. However, most of the current skin-interactive systems
usually suffer from device performance degradation over time
owing to multiple bending or stretching operations. Fortu-
nately, to obtain such distinctive feature of human skin, self-
healable materials have recently driven crucial advances by
means of imitating restorative characteristics of human skin to
hold the capability of self-repair behaviors, which enables the
Adv. Mater. Technol. 2019, 4, 1800628
Figure 5. a) Photograph of a finger with the ultraflexible organic optical sensor attached. b) Device structure of the pulse oximeter (top) and operation
principle of the reflective pulse oximeter (bottom). c) Output signal from OPD with 99% (left) and 90% (right) oxygenation of blood. a–c) Reproduced
with permission.[80] Copyright 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science. d) The uniaxial stretching of polymer SPR film at a con-
stant stretching speed. e) Surface morphology of stretched polymer SPR film with 25 nm Ag film. The arrows denote the direction of externally applied
stress. f) SERS spectra of 4-methylbenzenethiol molecules adsorbed on polymer SPR film with 25 nm Ag film. g) A photograph image of polymer SPR
film attached onto the green mussel surface contaminated by malachite green molecules. h) Schematic diagram of contacting polymer SPR film onto
the green mussel and collecting the SERS signals from the back side surface. i) Schematic of collection of fresh human tears by polymer SPR film for
healthcare monitoring. d–i) Reproduced with permission.[83] Copyright 2017, American Chemical Society.

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deformable electronics to recover its stretchability or prevent
permanent breakdowns.[110] Additionally, to synchronously
manipulate these multiple flexible sensors, including signals’
processing and transmission, the power supply, however, is
a formidable issue. Conventional power sources and energy
storage systems are usually bulky with circuital connections and
demand frequent charging and replacement, which strongly
restricts their practical applications. To catch up with the trend
of lightweight, ultrathin, and user-friendly skin-interfaced wear-
able devices, innovative energy supply systems are urgently
required. A promising alternative strategy to resolve the issue
of energy supplies in E-skin is to develop functional self-pow-
ered systems, which not only provide the desired sensing func-
tionalities, but also can work under the circumstances of no
external power supplies.[111] In pursuit of state-of-the-art multi-
functional skin-interfaced wearable health-monitoring systems,
in this part, we will primarily concentrate on discussing the
latest developments of the foregoing aspects.
3.1. Integration of Multiple Sensors
In the past decade, a number of attempts have been continu-
ously involved in boosting the performance of various flexible
sensors in terms of monitoring subjects’ physical or chemical
states, such as temperature, motion, heartbeat, sweat, etc. Nev-
ertheless, most of these flexible devices are usually able to gain
one sole vital sign, which is insufficient to diagnose health
conditions. One alternative route relies on the transduction of
various stimuli into a coupled signal within a single device,
but it mostly suffers from the interference of multiple signals
in the decoupling procedure.[112,113] Additionally, the output of
a specific flexible sensor is usually influenced by other physi-
ological information. For example, sweat contains rich clinical
information, such as glucose, calcium, potassium, metal ions,
or pH, but their value is highly dependent on the variation of
skin temperature.[25,114] Thus, the incorporation of multiple
sensors into a single chip is of high significance to synchro-
nously detect multicomplex stimuli from the skin, rendering
the accurate and selective diagnosis of various diseases.
In spite of many existing challenges, a plurality of research
groups have taken the first step toward merging at least two cat-
egories of sensors into a flexible device.[112,115–117] Particularly,
the integration of temperature and pressure/strain sensors
has attracted massive attentions, which was pioneered by
Someya et al.[118] One of the major concerns is to simultane-
ously measure multiple signals without crosscoupling. A gen-
eral strategy relies on stacking double active layers as bimodal
sensors to monitor the temperature and pressure stimuli,
respectively. For instance, Jeon et al. demonstrated a vertically
stacked bimodal device configuration based on separation
between piezoresistive effect and thermoelectric effect, avoiding
decoupling the data.[115] Taking advantage of the superior elec-
trical, mechanical, and lightweight features of carbon materials,
an integrated temperature-pressure E-skin was reported with
silk-nanofiber-derived carbon fiber membranes as both active
materials, which exhibits a temperature sensitivity of 0.81%
per centigrade and an extremely high sensitivity with a gauge
factor of ≈8350 at 50% strain (Figure 6a).[119] Significantly, the
temperature sensor is not influenced by the external pressure
stimulus and vice versa. Inspired by the human skin with con-
figuration of epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis, a sandwich-
like sensing system is able to monitor signals of temperature,
light, and pressure synchronously without mutual signal
interference (Figure 6b).[120] To simplify the operation and
integration, Zhu et al. developed a bimodal sensor composed
of two sinuous platinum (Pt) ribbons on a flexible polyimide
substrate rather than multiple layers adopted by the foregoing
mentioned examples.[116] Thanks to the construction of the dual
thermosensitive ribbons as well as the constant temperature
difference feedback circuit, the bimodal device is capable of
simultaneously and independently monitoring artery tempera-
ture and wrist pulse. Overall, satisfactory progress has been
made in the aspect of incorporation of two or three sensors into
one flexible device and monitor signals discriminably without
the crosscoupling effect.
The further integration of multiple sensors, signal pro-
cessing, and even power supply modules usually employs
relatively thicker films (several hundred micrometers) as
supporting matrices because of handling ease during the
fabrication. On the other hand, to improve the reliability of the
sensing and wearability, several groups have successfully pre-
pared ultrathin films with the thickness of a few micrometers
to make the wearable device more comfortable to wear over the
skin.[122,123] The effect of film thickness on the output of strain
or ECG sensors has been investigated.[124–126] In addition, a
good adhesion is often pivotal between some flexible sensors
and skin, so that an adhesion layer is mostly applied despite
its unsuitability for long-time measurements owing to skin irri-
tation. Recently, a multifunctional flexible healthcare patch is
developed by integrating an efficient skin temperature sensor
and a gel-less sticky ECG sensor (Figure 6c,d).[121] It is found
the film thickness should be thinner to accurately measure the
skin temperature and the optimization of material concentra-
tion of CNT, PEIE, as well as PDMS could yield a relatively
reliable gel-less ECG sensor. The integrated sensor patch is
attached to a subject’s chest under conditions of standing up,
sitting down, standing up, and running states (Figure 6e,f). A
small difference of about 1 °C is observed for the skin tem-
perature between the flexible temperature sensor and commer-
cial IR sensor because of the film thickness, which should be
overcome in future to realize practical applications of wearable
healthcare patches.
Simultaneous monitoring of chemical contents and physical
properties is of high value to obtain complementary parameters,
allowing to predict and diagnose adverse health conditions. For
instance, it is probable to forecast dehydration during exercise
through measuring pH level concurrently in sweat and skin
temperature.[127] Several work has been demonstrated to mon-
itor chemical states and physical conditions.[69,128,129] Recently,
an ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET)-based pH sensor
is incorporated with a printed temperature sensor, which is
able to both measure skin temperature and compensate for the
temperature effect of the ISFET (Figure 6g).[114] The advantage
of employing the ISFET is attributed to its relatively simple
direct current detection, while the conventional cyclic voltam-
metry (CV) method requires more complex measurements.
The ISFET is constructed with InGaZnO thin-film, Al2O3, and
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Adv. Mater. Technol. 2019, 4, 1800628
Figure 6. a) Schematic illustration of the silk-based combo temperature–pressure E-skin sensor. Reproduced with permission.[119] Copyright
2017, American Chemical Society. b) Schematic comparison of layered structure between human skin and SIMPS. I, Epidermis corresponds
to light/temperature sensor; II, Dermis corresponds to pressure sensor; III–IV, Hypodermis corresponds to Temperature sensor and thermal
insulating layer. Reproduced with permission.[120] Copyright 2017, John Wiley & Sons. c) Schematic image of the equivalent circuit of the ECG
sensor and heat transfer through a PET film from skin to the device. d) Photographs of the fabricated device (left) and the adhesion test of the
device peeled from skin (right). Results of the real-time ECG signal and skin temperature monitoring with a control temperature measurement
using an IR sensor at e) standing up and sitting down states and f) strong-step states. c–f ) Reproduced with permission.[121] Copyright 2017,
John Wiley & Sons. g) Schematic of a wearable device integrating flexible pH and temperature sensors (top) and cross-sectional diagram of the
device (bottom). h) Real-time pH and skin temperature acquired by the device. g,h) Reproduced with permission.[114] Copyright 2017, American
Chemical Society.

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a pH sensing membrane. It is found that when performing
the measurement of pH level and temperature simultaneously
based on the designed integrated flexible sensors, it is capable
of compensating for the potential shift because of pH and tem-
perature, giving rise to the precise pH monitoring over a wide
temperature range. After attaching the wearable sweat ISFET-
based pH sensor system onto a subject’s neck by a double-side
tape, the real-time monitoring of sweat pH and skin tempera-
ture comes true after exercising. The skin temperature is meas-
ured to be in the range of 30.0–31.7 °C with the pH at around
4.0, which agrees well with the control experiments (Figure 6h).
However, the ISFET in this work cannot distinguish different
chemicals, such as urea or lactic acid, as they also vary the pH
values. Chemical sensitive membrane could be formed on the
ISFET for selectively monitoring different molecules.
Due to complex fabrication procedures as well as diverse
materials’ requirement for different sensors, it is still chal-
lenging to integrate more than three sensors into a flexible
chip, and meanwhile endowed with high mechanical flexibility,
superior signal selectivity as well as excellent wearing comfort,
although very limited reports have demonstrated this capa-
bility.[12,16,25,130] Undoubtedly, the incorporation of a plurality
of sensors enables the E-skin with more intriguing function-
alities.[131] For instance, the monitoring of heartbeat, skin tem-
perature, ECG, etc. is traditionally conducted under subjects’
resting state, which, as a matter of fact, cannot completely
reflect bodies’ health conditions. In view of this issue, Takei
et al. demonstrated a multifunctional wearable health care
monitoring device through integrating three sensors, including
a skin temperature sensor, an ECG sensor, and an environ-
mental ultraviolet (UV) light sensor, with a printed three-axis
acceleration sensor (Figure 7a–c).[18] Considering the device
required to be directly contacted with the skin, this multipur-
pose device is designed with a modular design comprising two
detachable components (disposable and nondisposable layers)
to address cost and hygiene concerns (Figure 7d). To be spe-
cific, a disposable sensor sheet that is directly worn on the skin
takes into account cost-effective fabrication methods, low-cost
materials as well as hygiene issues, whereas the other nondis-
posable or reusable sheet contains relatively expensive compo-
nents. Both sheets are connected via a eutectic gallium–indium
(EGaIn) liquid metal contact, which shows high stability under
mechanical bending. By wearing the device onto the chest,
simultaneously real-time monitoring of various sets of health
information, including skin temperature, ECG, UV exposure,
is realized under different physical activities, such as rest, fast
steps, walking-pace steps and lying down (Figure 7e,f). It is
found that the differences between running states and walking
steps could be distinguished by observing the frequency and
amplitude extracted from the acceleration sensor, indicating
its role to differentiate health status at different physical condi-
tions. Additionally, the stronger relationship between the trend
of human motion and health states could be further analyzed
by the approach of deep learning.
The incorporation of multiple sensors cannot only acquire
comprehensive vital signs from human bodies, but also afford
the ability to interact with environment. Zhu et al. recently
demonstrated a multifunctional electronic skin endowed with
multiple sensing abilities to perceive temperature and pressure
stimuli, identify matter type and sense wind.[17] The introduc-
tion of various platinum ribbons array allows the formation of
multiple sensing units, indicating a simple integration route to
realize effective human–machine interaction capabilities. Fur-
thermore, to increase the stretchability of skin-like integrated
sensor systems, a stretchable and conformable matrix network
(SCMN) was developed, which is provided with fascinating capa-
bilities to simultaneously detect temperature, strain, humidity,
ultraviolet light, magnetic field, pressure as well as proximity
with good selectivity and discrimination (Figure 8a–c).[16] Inspired
by the human skin with a complex somatosensory architecture, a
SCMN comprising 100 sensory nodes connected by meandering
wires is achieved as a multifunctional sensing platform. Taking
merit of the meandering structure, the SCMN can be adjusted to
conform to the skin area, exhibiting tunable sensing range and
large-area expandability. It is found that a 25-fold expansion of
the sensing area could be realized ranging from 16 cm−2 (orig-
inal coverage) to 400 cm−2 (expandable size). Additionally, owing
to the insulation of polyimide dielectric thin films, 3D integra-
tion could be achieved by sharing a sensory node with different
functional sensors. Via coupling the SCMN configuration with
a prosthetic hand, the temperature could be accurately esti-
mated by the intelligent hand when performing grasp/release
manipulations (Figure 8d–f). Such skin-inspired SCMN with
considerable merits could be applied to diverse fields, such as
humanoid robotics, new prosthetics as well as health-monitoring.
In the previous section, various types of chemical sensors
and their recent developments are illustrated. However, the gen-
eral reported noninvasive biosensors can only detect a single
analyte or biofluid at a time. Recently, Kim et al. developed a
dual epidermal biofluid sampling and analysis strategy, allowing
the simultaneous detection of sweat at an anode and intersti-
tial fluid at a cathode.[117] Due to the complex compositions of
biofluid such as sweat, it is still challenging to detect a plurality
of biomarkers using a single wearable device and perform real-
time signal processing to accurately evaluate health status.
Remarkably, Gao et al. demonstrated a wearable flexible inte-
grated sensing array (FISA) for multiplexed in situ perspiration
analysis, which realizes simultaneous and selective measure-
ment of abundant sweat biomarkers and skin temperature
(Figure 8g–i).[25] At an unprecedented level of integration, this
work merged various functionalities, including signal trans-
duction, conditioning, processing as well as wireless transmis-
sion, into a single flexible system for real-time monitoring of
subjects’ physiological states, which comprises skin-interfaced
plastic sensors (five different sensors) and silicon integrated cir-
cuits consolidated on a flexible board (more than ten chips). By
wearing the FISA on different parts of the body, such as wrists,
arms, or forehead, the mechanically flexible wearable sensor can
be applied for prolonged indoor and outdoor activities, allowing
the real-time assessment of health status (Figure 8j). In spite of
five sensors synchronously performing system-level measure-
ments, excellent selectivity is maintained upon varying each
analyte’s concentration (Figure 8k). In addition, the incorporated
temperature sensor assists in eliminating the effect of tempera-
ture variation in the readings. It is found the potentiometric sen-
sors are hardly influenced by the temperature, but the responses
of glucose and lactate sensors rise quickly with increasing the
solution temperature from 22 to 40 °C, indicating the effect of
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enhanced enzymatic performance, the readings of which can be
compensated by temperature variations (Figure 8l). It is envi-
sioned that large database could be established through commu-
nity participation to drive forward the data-mining techniques,
allowing the better comprehending of health conditions.
3.2. Self-Healing Material-Based Devices
To improve the reliability, extend the lifespan as well as fur-
ther increase the functionality, such as ultrahigh stretchability
without performance degradation for skin-interfaced sensors,
Adv. Mater. Technol. 2019, 4, 1800628
Figure 7. Schematics of a) the whole device structure, including both disposable and reusable components, b) EGaIn and Ag contact region between
the sheets (left) and three-axis acceleration sensor (right). c) Image of the fabricated device. d) Image of the device, particularly focused on the EGaIn-
Ag contact region between the sheets. e) Image of the multifunctional device attached directly onto the skin. f) Real-time acceleration (motion), ECG,
skin temperature, and UV monitoring results. All panels reproduced with permission.[18] Copyright 2016, American Association for the Advancement
of Science.

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the flexible electronic devices are envisaged to gain attractive
self-healing capability via mimicking the natural systems. Typi-
cally, the self-healing systems can be classified into extrinsic
and intrinsic self-healing. The extrinsic self-healing requires
external triggers (e.g., heat, light, or chemicals) to initiate the
self-healing processes upon damage. These external healing
agents are usually encapsulated in capsules or vascular net-
work. The capsule-based healing system is implemented via
directly spreading capsules into a matrix, but after a single
damage event, it suffers from local function depletion.[132] To
overcome this issue, the vascular self-healing systems are
developed through sequestering healing agents in networks
in the form of capillaries or hollow channels. However, their
complicated fabrication processes are not appropriate for prac-
tical applications.[19] Another promising strategy to realize
self-healing systems is constructed from intrinsic self-healing
materials, requiring no external healing agents. Most of such
self-healing materials are dominated by covalent or noncovalent
self-healing mechanisms based on dynamic reversible bond
interactions, such as hydrogen bonding,
π
–
π
stacking, dipole–
dipole or van der Waal’s interactions, which spontaneously
takes place at ambient circumstances to recover the function-
ality upon damage.[133]
Regarding to E-skin applications, it is greatly crucial to
endow self-healing materials with the capability to restore not
only mechanical features, but also high electronic conductivity,
Adv. Mater. Technol. 2019, 4, 1800628
Figure 8. a) Schematic illustration of SCMNs conforming to the surface of a human arm and an expanded network (expansion: 200%) conforming
to the surface of a human abdomen (right); the tree branch-like connections of neurons (left bottom); the sensory receptors of the glabrous skin
(left top). b) Optical image of the fabricated polyimide network. c) Schematic layout of an SCMN—an integrated sensor array with eight functions.
(temp.: temperature). d) Images show operations of the intelligent prosthetic hand to grasp (upper) and release (bottom). e) Pressure distribution
contour on the fingers when the intelligent prosthetic hand is grasping a water cup and sensing temperature of 59.1 °C. f) Temperature estimation by
the fitting equation when the intelligent prosthetic hand is grasping. a–f) Reproduced with permission.[16] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group.
g) Photograph of a wearable FISA on a subject’s wrist, integrating the multiplexed sweat sensor array and the wireless FPCB. h) Photograph of a flat-
tened FISA. i) Schematic of the sensor array for multiplexed perspiration analysis. j) Photographs of a subject wearing a “smart headband” and a “smart
wristband” during stationary cycling. k) System-level interference studies of the sensor array. l) System-level real-time temperature T compensation for
the glucose and lactate sensors. g–l) Reproduced with permission.[25] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group.

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although it is a formidable challenge due to the difficulty in
achieving high bulk electrically conductive self-healing mate-
rials. One probable route is to develop conductive polymers
through rationally introducing reversible bonds within poly-
meric matrix.[134,135] For instance, Yu et al. demonstrated a
hybrid gel system, where a 3D nanostructured polypyrrole
(PPy) gel contributes to conductivity and metal−ligand supra-
molecules mainly serve as self-healing without any external
stimuli.[135] A relatively high conductivity of 0.12 S cm−1 is
achieved compared to its congeners. Another facile way to
obtain conductively self-healable systems relies on directly
depositing conductive materials onto the surfaces of noncon-
ductive self-healing substrates.[136,137] The healing process
enables the separated conductive layers into contact. Neverthe-
less, the conductive layers may suffer from exfoliation from
the substrates after repeated deformation, limiting their long-
term stability for practical applications. To achieve more reli-
able self-healing systems with higher conductivities as well as
better mechanical stability, a promising strategy is to merge
conducting fillers into nonconductive self-healing matrices,
allowing the formation of conductive self-healing composites.
Until now, a number of materials have been employed to serve
as conducting fillers, such as metallic nanowires,[138] graphene
based materials,[139] CNTs,[140–142] metal particles,[143] liquid
metal,[27] or ionic liquid[144] for the sake of improving perfor-
mance of the self-healing material-based devices. A pioneering
work is made by Tee et al. via incorporating micronickel (µNi)
particles into a supramolecular polymeric hydrogen-bonding
network.[145] The high electrical conductivity of 40 S cm−1 is
gained with good stretchability and ≈90% of its initial conduc-
tivity is able to be recovered after healing duration of 15 s.
With these performance-enhanced flexible conductive self-
healing materials as building blocks, diverse flexible sensors
have been developed provided with superior self-healing capa-
bilities.[19,134,146,147] A recent impressive work was conducted
by Lee and co-workers.[140] Through incorporating CNTs, gra-
phene, or silver nanowires into borax/polyvinylalcohol-based
self-healing nanomaterials, the self-healable strain sensor
is capable of withstanding strain up to 1000% with a high
gauge factor of 1.51, partially attributed to rapid electrical
healing speed (within 3.2 s) as well as self-healing efficiency
(98 ± 0.8%). There is no significant variation observed after
stretching the flexible sensor to 700% for 1000 cycles. Darabi
et al. demonstrated a stretchable and self-healable wireless
human motion detector based on the matrices of autonomous
intrinsic self-healing of physically and chemically crosslinked
polymers, which can collect the human physiological informa-
tion of respiratory, pulse, and muscle motions.[28] The intro-
duction of a covalent crosslinking between poly(acrylic acid)
and N,N″-methylenebis-acrylamide enhances the mechanical
performance of the hydrogel. Such a double network hydrogel
presents 100% mechanical recovery in 2 min with distinct
ultrastretchability of 1500%. Although tremendous progress
has been made in the self-healable materials/devices, the
integration of a multifunctional electronic system based on
self-healing materials has not been realized, which is primarily
due to the challenges of different sophisticated needs to fabri-
cate each component and in the lack of massive integration of
individual self-healable modules into a system.
To address these issues, a pioneering work has been carried
out by Bao et al., realizing a multifunctional stretchable and
self-healable electronic skin system (MSES) (Figure 9).[26] This
is innovatively achieved via applying a self-healing polymer
matrix surrounding a nanowire conductive network. Upon
broken, the conductive network is able to reconstruct itself
dynamically and autonomously heal to recover both high con-
ductivity and mechanical properties. The backbone materials
of self-healing polymer matrix (PDMS-MPU0.4-IU0.6) are com-
posed of strong (4,4′-methylenebis (phenyl urea) unit, MPU),
weak (isophorone bisurea unit, IU) dynamic bonding units,
and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), showing a high stretch-
ability up to 1600% strain and a high fracture toughness of
(12 000 J m−2). Such a crosslinked network PDMS-MPU0.4-IU0.6
is then coupled with elastic carbon nanotubes (CNTs), allowing
the formation of conductive and self-healable nanonetwork.
The self-healing process of the electrode is categorized into two
processes, including spontaneous physical contact after the
mechanical damage inflicted on it and reorganization of
the CNT network during restructuring of the polymer matrix
(Figure 9a). Relying on the designed materials as well as facile
bonding fabrication process, the MSES platform is demon-
strated for the first time through the integration of a strain mon-
itor, an ECG sensor and a light-emitting capacitor (LEC) array
(Figure 9b). These electronic modules are self-bonded onto the
PDMS-MPU0.4-IU0.6 substrate. Owing to its low modulus and
high stretchability, the MSES could be seamlessly mounted
onto the human skin for continuous healthcare monitoring.
The physiological information is able to be recorded by the sen-
sors, processed and subsequently transmitted wirelessly to the
self-healable LEC display for visual interpretation (Figure 9c).
Such system-level multifunctional self-healable E-skins afford
intriguing potentials for future robust and unbreakable wear-
able electronics.
3.3. Self-Powered Flexible Sensors
To successfully manipulate a wearable multimodal system sus-
tainably and independently, the power module plays a highly
significant role in efficient signals’ generation, transmission,
and processing. Indeed, the development of flexible superca-
pacitors or batteries serves as a promising strategy to conform
to the mainstream of wearable electronics. However, such flex-
ible energy-storage devices are limited by relatively low energy
and power densities, hindering their practical applications,
especially in remote regions. Fortunately, the burgeoning self-
powered systems are emerged as alternative energy-harvesting
techniques, which are envisioned to substitute for the tradi-
tional bulky power components. The self-powered sensors are
capable of implementing the functions by themselves sus-
tainably and independently without external power sources
through transforming the ubiquitous energy from ambient or
human bodies, primarily including mechanical energy, thermal
energy as well as solar energy. A great deal of efforts in the
past decade have thus been dedicated to improving the energy
conversion efficiency, flexibility, or conformability of the self-
powered systems via judiciously constructing new materials or
structures.[148,149]
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Figure 9. a) Proposed recovery mechanism for CNTs embedded in self-healing polymer matrix. CNT network reconstruction is based on observa-
tions as follows: (1)) continuous reduction of resistance over time, (2)) recovery of stretchability, 3) maintaining high conductivity with strain
for recovered electrode, 4) lack of clear physical separation in the CNT network in the recovered cut region. b) Multifunctional self-healable elec-
tronic skin device on skin while performing LEC operation, which emits a blue-green light. Inset: electronic skin on rigid substrate. c) Overview
of the system with sensors wirelessly communicating values to the display. All panels reproduced with permission.[26] Copyright 2018, Nature
Publishing Group.

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Mechanical energy is mostly derived from the movement
of human bodies or ambient vibrations. Typically, triboelectric
and piezoelectric effects are two reliable approaches to con-
vert mechanical energy to electricity for wearable electronics.
Since the first report of flexible triboelectric nanogenerators
(TENGs) by Fan et al.,[150] several groups have been involved
in applying TENGs on skin-inspired sensors, targeting at
the realization of battery-free monitoring and diagnostic sys-
tems.[111,151–157] For instance, Pu et al. reported a mechnosen-
sational TENG (msTENG)-based noninvasive micromotion
sensor that is capable of translating eye blink into control com-
mand based on a multifilm structure, which could be flexibly
mounted behind an eyeglass arm (Figure 10a).[158] Owing to its
high sensitivity (≈750 mV), the smart sensor can not only con-
trol the household appliances, but also exhibits the promising
functionality as a hands-free typing system (typing with eye
blinking), making life easier and more fascinating (Figure 10b).
To monitor heart-rate in real time, Lin et al. demonstrated a
self-powered wireless body sensor network (BSN), comprising
a downy-structure-based TENG (D-TENG), a power manage-
ment circuit, a heart-rate sensor, a signal processing module as
well as a Bluetooth module.[159] Under natural human walking,
a power as high as 2.28 mW with conversion efficiency of
57.9% is achieved from the wearable D-TENG, which provides
essential electricity for the BSN configuration. The majority of
current self-powered TENG devices typically aim at a single cat-
egory of human activities due to their incapability in response
to various mechanical stimuli and limitation in sensing range.
Ho et al. reported a stretchable TENG based on a coaxial core-
sheath fiber.[152] Taking advantage of the unique combination
of materials engineering and configuration design, such fiber
TENGs are capable of responding to various human activities,
including finger bending, walking, forearm rotation, pulse,
respiration, and throat-related activities. Additionally, the tradi-
tional TENGs usually require vertical contact-separation mode
with a macroscale air gap, otherwise the device may suffer from
the performance degradation. However, the human-interactive
applications demand the flexible sensors to be conformally
attached onto fingers or elbow joints, where the macroscale
separation mode is hard to realize. Fortunately, microfluidic-
based TENGs could resolve this issue via filling liquid into the
chamber.[160] The generation of output signals depends on the
different volumes of liquid flowing within the channel, making
it possible to synchronously measure both the magnitude and
frequency of pressure. However, there exist intrinsic limitations
of wearable triboelectric E-skin, such as high variations of tri-
boelectric signals in humid ambient, weak power generation
due to mechanical damage by friction and relatively complex
structure architectures.[111] Piezoelectric materials-based E-skin
sensor is able to overcome the foregoing issues. Recently, Lee’s
group developed a self-powered flexible piezoelectric pulse
sensor using an inorganic-based laser lift-off technique with
Pb[Zrx,Ti1−x]O3 (PZT) film as the building block to monitor
health in real time (Figure 10c).[161] The flexible piezoelectric
sensor shows a sensitivity of 0.018 kPa−1 with response duration
of 60 ms, which could respond to lower frequency vibrations
Adv. Mater. Technol. 2019, 4, 1800628
Figure 10. a) Schematic structure of a pair of ordinary glasses mounted with msTENG. b) Correspondence between signals and letters typed in the
demonstration of a hands-free typing system with adjustable threshold, detecting time, and cursor shift interval, and demonstration of the msTENG-
based hands-free wireless typing system. a,b) Reproduced with permission.[158] Copyright 2017, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
c) Schematic illustration of the fabrication process for self-powered pressure sensor. d) Photograph of the LED and speaker unit operated synchronously
corresponding to the radial artery pulse. e) Photograph of wireless transmission of the pulse to a smart phone, showing capability for a real-time arterial
pulse monitoring system. c–e) Reproduced with permission.[161] Copyright 2017, John Wiley & Sons.

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from 0.2 to 5.0 Hz and higher frequency sound waves of
240 Hz. More importantly, the pulse signals can be wirelessly
transmitted to a smart phone (Figure 10d,e).
Thermal energy is quite common in our surroundings and
particularly, waste heat energy abundantly exists in industries,
combustion engines, solar heat, human bodies, etc. The dex-
terous reclamation of these low-grade heat is envisaged to
realize a decarbonized ecosystem through smart energy con-
version technologies. Undoubtedly, if the wearable integrated
skin-interactive systems are endowed with the capability to
efficiently convert these ample waste heat to electricity, it is con-
ceivable to not only drive a couple of sensors without external
bulky power supply, but also fulfill an environmentally friendly
community. With this motivation in mind, several groups have
been dedicated to scavenging energy for sensing principally
on the basis of thermoelectric or pyroelectric effect. Thermo-
electric generators, chiefly constructed with solid-state semi-
conductors materials, rely on the conversion of thermal energy
into electricity via Seebeck effect demanding spatial tempera-
ture gradient. To boost the output power of thermoelectric
generators, although, as an alternatively promising strategy,
thermocells have been applied to harvest waste heat based
on electrons transfer between redox couples and electrodes
due to the nature of relatively high Seebeck coefficient, such
steady temperature variations are scarce in natural surround-
ings.[162–164] On the contrary, pyroelectric generators (PyNGs)
are subjected to time dependent temperature fluctuation so as
to trigger the energy conversion processes.[165–169] For example,
the temperature of body exhaled gas is similar to human body,
which is generally higher than the environmental temperature,
especially in winter. As such, a wearable self-powered breathing
sensor is developed via integrating a PyNG configuration on a
respirator.[170] At 5 °C ambient temperature, the PyNG can not
only generate high enough power to drive liquid crystal display
or LEDs, but also function as a respiration sensor to monitor
the frequency and intensity of breathing pertaining to the
symptoms of human body.
To further improve the scavenging efficiency of low grade
heat, supplementary power generators are rationally hybrid-
ized to concurrently harvest energy.[166,171–173] Because of the
dual nature of ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)
with both piezoelectric and thermal properties, a self-powered
piezoelectric–pyroelectric nanogenerator is demonstrated built
from nonwoven nanofiber membranes via facile electrospin-
ning methods.[174] Through the coupling of piezoelectric and
pyroelectric effects, the total output signal could be enhanced
with the synergistic current expressed as[175]
I
dA
t
pA T
t
d
d
d
d
piezopyro
33
σ
=+
+ (2)
where d33, A, d
σ
/dt, p, and dT/dt are the piezoelectric coeffi-
cient, effective area of the device, the rate of mechanical stress
change, pyroelectric coefficient, and the rate of temperature
change, respectively. The generation of hybrid piezoelectric–
pyroelectric current is achieved by periodically turning the hot
airflow, similar to the exhaust emissions of cars, on (bending
and heating) and off (unbending and cooling). Furthermore,
to minimize the energy loss during the friction, Zi et al.
demonstrated a triboelectric–pyroelectric–piezoelectric hybrid
cell consisting of a sliding mode TENG and pyroelectric–
piezoelectric nanogenerator (PPENG).[172] Due to the capability
of PPEGN to scavenge the friction-induced heat and mechanical
energy, such hybrid cells present about two-fold performance of
charging a super capacitor higher than that of the TENG alone,
which pushes forward the potential applications in multifunc-
tional self-powered sensors. Although tremendous progress has
been made in harvesting waste heat, formidable challenges still
exist in autonomously continuous extraction and utilization
of the low-grade thermal energy. To surmount this obstacle, a
self-governing thermo-mechano-electrical system (TMES) has
been recently demonstrated by Ho and co-workers.[166] Because
of structural instability induced by thermal responsive bending
shape and air-solid temperature gradient, the TMES can simul-
taneously harvest self-created temperature fluctuations and
mechanical mobility, allowing the self-propelled multimodal
locomotions, which in turn promote the self-sustained temper-
ature fluctuations to achieve perpetual movement for ceaseless
power generation (Figure 11a–d).
Solar energy is another rich source, usually relying on
photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity.[176,177]
However, there are several intrinsic limitations, such as uncer-
tain of climate or failure to connect sensors with the solar cells.
In view of these issues, Yun et al. demonstrated a stretchable
array of micro-supercapacitors (MSCs), which are charged by
commercial Si-based solar cells (SCs) to drive an integrated
strain sensor.[29] The MSCs could maintain 80% of their original
capacitance after 5 000 charge/discharge cycles. Furthermore,
no significant change is observed after 1000 biaxial stretching/
releasing cycles by 30%. Through using the electricity stored
in the MSCs from the SCs, the integrated system is able to be
wrapped onto the wrist to successfully monitor external strain
as well as arterial pulse. However, the traditional Si-based SCs
are typically brittle and their thicknesses are several hundreds
of micrometers, decreasing the compatibility in wearable appli-
cations. As an intriguing alternative, organic photovoltaics
could also provide self-powered functionality to be adhered
onto skin and complex biological tissues. However, because of
the unsteady output power under mechanical deformation, the
ultraflexible organic power sources have not been integrated
with the sensors until a recent unprecedented work by Someya
et al.[30] On a 1
µ
m thick ultraflexible substrate, organic electro-
chemical transistors (OECTs) coupled with organic photovoltaic
power sources are fabricated, rendering the measurement of
biometric signals with a high signal-to-noise ratio up to 40.02
decibels to record cardiac signals (Figure 11e,f). The formation
of nanograting structures at a periodicity of 760 nm promi-
nently boosts the efficiency of organophotovoltaics, making the
cells’ efficiency insensitive to the angle of incident light and thus
giving rise to a power-conversion efficiency of 10.5%. Due to
its superior skin-conformability, the self-powered OECT sensor
could be adhered onto the fingertip to record cardiac signals
driven by light-emitting diodes. The sensitivity is around three
times higher than that of OECTs powered by external electrical
sources (Figure 11g–i).[178] The superior mechanical flexibility
and biocompatibility of the ultrathin device (several microm-
eters) enables it to be seamlessly attached onto an exposed rat
heart for in vivo recording ECG signals (Figure 11j–k).

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4. Large-Scale Flexible Devices
As the core of booming IoTs, the multifunctional wearable elec-
tronics/devices are envisioned to be realized over large scales
on the order of square centimeters to square meters, so that the
mechanically flexible network could be conformally wrapped
onto arbitrary surfaces to quantify various stimuli, while a
single-pixel circuitry cannot implement this goal. Since the first
Figure 11. a) Schematic illustration of the design concept of thermo-mechano-electrical conversion based on a bimorph actuator. b) Schematic
representation and snapshots of a self-rolling motion of TMES. c) Charging characteristic of TMES-bot and an inset photograph of a lighted LED using
a charged capacitor. d) Open circuit voltage/short circuit current generated by locomotion of TMES under an ambient outdoor environment (top)
and photothermal-directed cyclic oscillations of the TMES (bottom). a–d) Reproduced with permission.[166] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group.
e) Structure of the OPV device. f) Photograph of the OPV device wrapped over a spatula rod and pulled by tweezers. g) Wiring diagram for cardiac
signal recording. h) Photograph of the self-powered integrated electronic device attached to a finger. i) Measured output current from the recorded
cardiac signal trace, under light illumination. j) Photograph of the self-powered integrated electronic device attached to the heart of a rat. k) Measured
output current from the ECG trace, under light illumination. e–k) Reproduced with permission.[30] Copyright 2018, Nature Publishing Group.

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demonstration of integrated flexible pressure sensor matrix,[179]
several groups have been devoted to constructing high-perfor-
mance macroscale flexible systems to realize objects’ spatial
and temporal profile mapping based on temperature or pres-
sure sensors array.[3,22,23,63,180,181] Representative work in terms
of such macroscale artificial skin is demonstrated by Javey and
co-workers.[22,23] With the backbone of semiconductor nano-
wires (NWs), a large-area active-matrix backplane (7 × 7 cm2)
is performed to monitor applied pressure profiles comprising
a flexible pressure-sensor array (18 × 19 pixels) at a low oper-
ating voltage (<5 V) (Figure 12a–c).[22] Furthermore, in order
to attain an instantaneous visual response without complex
data acquisition, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) compo-
nents are merged into the flexible sensor matrix, working as
a user-friendly display in response to the external pressure.[23]
Although tremendous progress has been made regarding the
aforementioned macroscale flexible devices, the pixel yield and
resolution could be further improved for elaborate mapping.
On the other hand, the cost should be considered if the versatile
human-interactive devices target at penetrating into common
households for daily use.
Recently, printing technologies (e.g., inkjet, roll-to-roll,
gravure printing, etc.) have attracted widespread research atten-
tions in constructing large area flexible devices because of
their cost-effect characteristics and rapid manufacturing pro-
cedures.[21,184–189] For the detailed description of each printing
methodology, such as principles or printable nanomaterials,
interested readers may refer to the excellent reviews by Chen
et al. and Wu et al.[190,191] This section will concentrate in
presenting the latest advances regarding to skin-inspired sys-
tems realized by relatively facile efficient printing techniques.
Compared to their counterparts (e.g., photolithography, electron-
beam lithography, focused ion-beam lithography, etc.), the
printing approach requires no complicated clean-room set-
tings and expensive chemicals, while allows the manufacturing
of functional devices at large scales. For instance, inspired by
unique sensing functionality of animals, Takei et al. demon-
strated artificial electronic whiskers (e-whisker) coupled with
strain and temperature sensors array by fully printed methods
(e.g., screen printing).[58] Taking advantage of the high sensi-
tivity of strain and temperature sensors on the e-whisker, the 3D
physical space and temperature distributions are obtained. Fur-
thermore, via employing only a screen printing, a fingerprint-
like structure is reported, which is capable of simultaneously
monitoring three-axis forces based on tactile and slip forces
detection as well as measuring temperature (Figure 12d–f).[182]
Four strain sensors and one temperature sensor are merged
into each pixel on a 8 × 8 cm2 substrate (Figure 12e). Through
the introduction of advanced commercially available printing
facilities, high-resolution patterns as low as 10 µm are antici-
pated to be achieved over larger scales. Additionally, the flexible
devices with the capability of mass production at low cost are
particularly significant in single-use applications with dispos-
able features. For example, roll-to-roll (R2R) gravure printed
electrodes are recently demonstrated for various electrochem-
ical sensing scenarios (Figure 12g).[21] The electrode arrays
consist of working, reference, and counter electrodes in the
formation of a canonical 3-electrode system, rendering the
detection of ions, heavy metals, metabolites, etc. (Figure 12h).
Different from the screen printing using the thickness of ink
up to 100 µm, the relatively thin layer of ink (≈10 µm) for the
R2R gravure approach leads to insufficient conductivity, thus a
bilayer working electrode is applied with a silver ink layer to
optimize the conductivity. Impressively, the scale of flexible
substrates based on the R2R approach is up to 150 m, making
the electrodes serve as disposable strips for point-of-care
diagnostics, such as in situ sweat monitoring.
To enable the realization of mechanically exquisite and
on-demand objects at fast speed, 3D printing is an excellent
candidate, with the capability of incorporating conductive
materials into microchannels to form integrated circuits and
sensors.[28,64,183,192] Benefiting from such merits of 3D printing,
Ota et al. developed 3D integrated electronic systems for a variety
of sensing, actuation as well as signal processing operations
through embedding liquid metal-based components and silicon
integrated circuits (Figure 12i,j).[183] Particularly, a form-fitting
glove tailored to patient’s body is demonstrated by integrating
a programmable heater and a temperature sensor for thermo-
therapy to boost blood flow and reduce pain at the point of injury
(Figure 12k). Definitely, such multifunctional printable devices
could be extended to other associated therapeutic and health
diagnostics, such as wound healing or drug delivery. The scalable
fabrication is attainable by packing more electronic modules.
5. Conclusions and Outlook
The past decade has witnessed enormous advances in skin-like
wearable electronics from fundamental syntheses of innovative
nanomaterials to demonstration of fascinating applications,
such as healthcare monitoring, soft robotics, artificial intelli-
gence, and human–machine interfaces. To reach the ultimately
promising target of state-of-the-art flexible E-skin systems,
scientists from diverse research fields have been involved
in this booming subject. In this report, we have focused on
the discussion of versatile wearable sensors endowed with
intriguing “multifunctionalities,” the trend to future wear-
able electronics. To start with, different categories of sensors
are introduced accompanied with the key technical challenges.
The multifunctional human-interactive flexible sensors are then
highlighted, including multimodal sensor systems, self-healing
material-based devices, and self-powered flexible sensors. Their
latest progress is critically presented. Additionally, the develop-
ment of large-scale flexible devices by rapid and cost-effective
means is briefly demonstrated. Owing to the unique features of
skin-inspired sensors, such as flexibility, stretchability, elasticity
and biocompatibility, wearable sensors could be conformally
and seamlessly attached onto the human body for the sensitive
monitoring of vital signs and perception of abundant ambient
information.
Despite the tremendous progress made in this burgeoning
topic, challenges still exist for practical applications. For
example, the measurement of flexible sensors in harsh environ-
ment, such as humid, rainy circumstances, low-temperature
(below 0 °C) environment, and even outer space, is rarely
studied. The artificial superhydrophobic coatings are a prom-
ising strategy to protect the flexible electronics, but they have
been only applied to unitary devices.[193,194] The multifunctional

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Figure 12. a) Schematic of the passive and active layers of NW E-skin. b) Optical photographs of a fully fabricated E-skin device under bending.
c) Design layout of the sensor device and the corresponding 2D intensity profile obtained from experimental mapping of the pixel signals. a–c) Repro-
duced with permission.[22] Copyright 2010, Nature Publishing Group. d) Schematic of E-skin device with fingerprint-like structures. e) Schematic of
the final E-skin device and an enlarged pixel with a fingerprint-like structure containing four strain sensors and a temperature sensor. f) Picture of a
3 × 3 array E-skin. d–f) Reproduced with permission.[182] Copyright 2014, American Chemical Society. g) Roll-to-roll gravure printing of biocompatible
electrode arrays on flexible PET substrates. h) Roll-to-roll gravure printed electrodes on a 150 m roll of PET substrate and optical micrograph (right) of
an array with 3 mm diameter electrodes. g,h) Reproduced with permission.[21] Copyright 2018, American Chemical Society. i) The multilayer schematic
of a 3D printed smart object. j) The fabrication process flow of a given layer. k) Thermography of the worn glove while powered on and circuit diagram
of the programmable power delivery to the heater based on the pulse width modulation (PWM) technique. i–k) Reproduced with permission.[183]
Copyright 2016, John Wiley & Sons.

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wearable sensor systems demand the judicious design of novel
materials, logical layout of various units as well as rational
packaging to make them survive in the unfriendly and tough
ambient. Second, more efforts are encouraged to further
integrate multiple sensors into self-healable materials so as
to realize fully self-healable wearable E-skin systems, while
simultaneously maintaining the high sensitivity of the flex-
ible sensors. This will tremendously prolong the life-span of
integrated wearable systems and probably make the unbreak-
able flexible devices come true. Third, although a great many
of self-powered units integrated with flexible sensors have been
developed based on smart energy conversion techniques, a com-
pletely battery-free human-friendly interactive electronic system
integrated with multiple sensors has not been realized. It is
still challenging to drive a plurality of sensors and concurrently
perform the data processing, transmission, and visualization
by current nanogenerators. The development of high-density,
large-volume, yet lightweight energy storage modules coupled
with more efficient energy conversion components is a potential
strategy. In addition, for the large-scale fabrication of wearable
electronics, ultrafast laser processing is an alternatively prom-
ising means to flexibly pattern the active sensing areas, allowing
the formation of enhanced features of materials through laser-
induced chemical reactions.[195–197] However, as the flexible
sensor systems are usually composed of various units with dif-
ferent materials, the selection of laser wavelength, repetition
rate, pulse durations, power density, processing speed, etc.,
should be carefully considered and explored for versatile wear-
able sensors. The effective settlement of these critical issues will
render the ultimate realization of the most cutting-edge multi-
functional skin-like electronic systems to benefit human beings.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by JST PRESTO (JPMJPR17J5) and JSPS
KAKENHI grants (JP17H04926 and JP18H05472). This article is part
of the special series on Advanced Intelligent Systems that showcases
the outstanding achievements of leading international researchers on
intelligent systems.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Keywords
electronic skin, flexible wearable sensors, multifunctionality, self-healable
devices, self-powered systems
Received: November 16, 2018
Revised: December 6, 2018
Published online: January 4, 2019
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