Inspired by the octopus, researchers have developed an artificial skin that responds to pressure and emits light when stretched.
Rob Shepherd at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues made the skin (pictured) by combining layers of transparent electrode-containing hydrogels with stretchy silicone sheets embedded with various zinc sulfides. They added light-emitting metal compounds to the zinc sulfides, causing them to emit different colours in response to electrical excitement. The team rolled, folded and stretched the material by nearly 500% without disrupting light emission. And the more the material was stretched, the brighter the light.
The authors incorporated panels of their material into a crawling soft robot, allowing it to luminesce as the robot undulated and the skin stretched. Pressing on the material altered its capacitance — its stored electric charge — so the researchers say that the skin could have applications in touch-sensitive robotics.
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Stretchy artificial skin that glows. Nature 531, 142 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/531142c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/531142c