Flexible and sensitive piezoresistive electronic skin based on TOCN/PPy hydrogel films

In recent years, the wearable electronic skin (E-skin) has attracted more and more attention due to high sensitivity, good portability and flexibility. In this work, we used the 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyl-1-oxyl (TEMPO)-oxidized cellulose nanofibril (TOCN) as the substrate, and used the in-situ polymerization method to introduce polypyrrole (PPy) into the TOCN substrate. Then, the nylon gauze was used as microstructure template to prepare a TOCN/PPy E-skin with a surface microstructure. This E-skin possessed excellent sensing and mechanical properties. In the pressure range of 0–600 Pa, the sensitivity of E-skin was 3.13 kPa −1 . In addition, the E-skin exhibited ultrafast response/recovery time (≤10 ms), ultralow detection limit of 0.3 Pa, good stability (>9000 cycles) and mechanical strength of up to 117 MPa. Therefore, the TOCN/PPy E-skin has broad development prospects in the fields of artificial intelligence and health monitoring.