Stretchy and sensitive skin

Materials Science Natural skin is both highly elastic and sensitive to small pressure changes, but this combination of properties has been hard to engineer into an electronic skin. Duan et al. built a double polymer network structure around nanofiber-containing chitosan microspheres that act as reinforcements, yielding a material with a highly stretchable, wrinkled structure. Dried chitosan microspheres were swollen in acid containing acrylamide that was polymerized to form a chitosan-polyacrylamide gel. In a subsequent step, the gels were soaked in acid containing aniline that was polymerized in situ. The resulting gels show excellent conductivity and force sensitivity with a wide pressure detection range. Adv. Mater. 10.1002/adma.201602126 (2016).