A Highly Sensitive, Ultra-Durable, Eco-Friendly Ionic Skin for Human Motion Monitoring

Abstract

Ionic conductive hydrogels have shown great potential in areas such as wearable devices and electronic skins. Aiming at the sensitivity and biodegradability of the traditional flexible hydrogel electronic skin, this paper developed an ionic skin (S−iSkin) based on edible starch–sodium alginate (starch–SA), which can convert the external strain stimulus into a voltage signal without an external power supply. As an excellent ion conductive polymer, S−iSkin exhibited good stretchability, low hydrophilicity and outstanding electrochemical and sensing properties. Driven by sodium ions, the ion charge transfer resistance of S−iSkin is reduced by 4 times, the capacitance value is increased by 2 times and its conductivity is increased by 7 times. Additionally, S−iSkin has excellent sensitivity and linearity (R2 = 0.998), a long service life and good biocompatibility. Under the action of micro-stress, it can produce a voltage change ratio of 2.6 times, and its sensitivity is 52.04. The service life test showed that it can work stably for 2000 s and work more than 200 stress–voltage response cycles. These findings provide a foundation for the development of health monitoring systems and micro-stress sensing devices based on renewable biomass materials.