All-Polymer Based Stretchable Rubbery Electronics and Sensors

The dissimilarity of material composition in existing stretchable electronics and biological organisms is a key bottleneck, still yet to be resolved, toward seamless integration between stretchable electronics and biological species. For instance, human or animal tissues and skins are fully made out of soft polymer species, while existing stretchable electronics are composed of rigid inorganic materials, either purely or partially. Soft stretchable electronics fully made out of polymeric materials with intrinsic softness and stretchability are sought after and therefore proposed to address this technical challenge. Here, rubbery electronics and sensors fully made out of stretchable polymeric materials including all-polymer rubbery transistors, sensors, and sensory skin, which have similar material composition to biology, are reported. The fabricated all-polymer rubbery transistors exhibit field-effect mobility of 1.11 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) and retain their transistor performance even under mechanical stretch of 30%. In addition, all-polymer rubbery strain and temperature sensors are demonstrated with high gauge factor and good temperature sensing capability. Based on these all-polymer rubbery electronics, an active-matrix multiplexed sensory skin on a robotic hand is demonstrated to illustrate one of the applications.

Automated summary

The dissimilarity in material composition between existing stretchable electronics and biological organisms poses a challenge for seamless integration. This study presents a novel approach using fully polymeric materials for stretchable electronics and sensors, which have similar material composition to biological species. The fabricated rubbery electronics demonstrate excellent performance and offer various application possibilities.