Liquid metal-facilitated flexible electrospun thermoplastic polyurethane fibrous mats with aligned wavelike structure for strain and triboelectric double-mode sensing

Flexible electronic skins (E-skins) have attracted widespread attention in artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, it still remains a huge challenge to fabricate multi-functional flexible E-skins through simple and efficient method. Herein, we present an E-skin with aligned wavelike structure for strain and triboelectric double-mode sensing, which is based on the composite of aligned liquid metal (LM)/ thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) fibrous mat (ALTFM) through a strategy of electrospinning, coating and pre-stretching. The ALTFM possesses good strain sensing performances including wide sensing range (up to 430% strain), fast response/recovery time (400 ms) and long-term durability. The ALTFM based E-skins demonstrates good triboelectric properties, including a high open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 255 V and a large power density of 27.6 mW/m2, resulting in reliable power supply and self-powered sensing capability. The assembled ALTFM can capture the trajectory of full range human motion stimuli, showing a broad application prospect in next generation wearable electronic devices.