Highly stretchable van der Waals thin films for adaptable and breathable electronic membranes

The conformal integration of electronic systems with irregular, soft objects is essential for many emerging technologies. We report the design of van der Waals thin films consisting of staggered two-dimensional nanosheets with bond-free van der Waals interfaces. The films feature sliding and rotation degrees of freedom among the staggered nanosheets to ensure mechanical stretchability and malleability, as well as a percolating network of nanochannels to endow permeability and breathability. With an excellent mechanical match to soft biological tissues, the freestanding films can naturally adapt to local surface topographies and seamlessly merge with living organisms with highly conformal interfaces, rendering living organisms with electronic functions, including leaf-gate and skin-gate transistors. On-skin transistors allow high-fidelity monitoring and local amplification of skin potentials and electrophysiological signals.

Automated summary

The conformal integration of electronic systems with irregular, soft objects is crucial for emerging technologies. This study presents the design of van der Waals thin films made of staggered two-dimensional nanosheets, which have bond-free interfaces. These films have sliding and rotation degrees of freedom among the nanosheets, ensuring mechanical stretchability and malleability, as well as a network of nanochannels for permeability and breathability. The films can adapt to the surface topography and seamlessly merge with living organisms, enabling electronic functions such as leaf-gate and skin-gate transistors.