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PDMSkin: On-Skin Gestures with Printable Ultra-Stretchable Soft Electronic Second Skin

Published: 06 June 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Innovative enabling technologies are key drivers of human augmentation. In this paper, we explore a new, conductive, and configurable material made from Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) that is capillary doped with silver particles (Ag) using an immiscible secondary fluid to build ultra-stretchable, soft electronics. Bonding silver particles directly with PDMS enables inherently stretchable Ag-PDMS circuits. Compared to previous work, the reduced silver consumption creates significant advantages, e.g., better stretchability and lower costs. The secondary fluid ensures self-assembling conductivity networks. Sensors are 3D-printed ultra-thin (<100μm) onto a pure PDMS substrate in one step and only require a PDMS cover-layer. They exhibit almost stable electrical properties even for an intense stretching of >200%. Therefore, printed circuits can attach tightly onto the body. Due to biocompatibility, devices can be implanted (e.g., open wounds treatment). We present a proof of concept on-skin interface that uses the new material to provide six distinct input gestures. Our quantitative evaluation with ten participants shows that we can successfully classify the gestures with a low spatial-resolution circuit. With few training data and a gradient boosting classifier, we yield 83% overall accuracy. Our qualitative material study with twelve participants shows that usability and comfort are well perceived; however, the smooth but easy to adapt surface does not feel tissue-equivalent. For future work, the new material will likely serve to build robust and skin-like electronics.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Skinergy: Machine-Embroidered Silicone-Textile Composites as On-Skin Self-Powered Input SensorsProceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3586183.3606729(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
  • (2022)An Atlas for the Inkjet Printing of Large-Area Tactile SensorsSensors10.3390/s2206233222:6(2332)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2022
  • (2022)An Automated Room Temperature Flip-Chip Mounting Process for Hybrid Printed ElectronicsMicromachines10.3390/mi1304058313:4(583)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2022
  • Show More Cited By

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  1. PDMSkin: On-Skin Gestures with Printable Ultra-Stretchable Soft Electronic Second Skin

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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      AHs '20: Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference
      March 2020
      296 pages
      ISBN:9781450376037
      DOI:10.1145/3384657
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Publication History

      Published: 06 June 2020

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      Author Tags

      1. novel material
      2. skin interface
      3. strain sensing

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      AHs '20
      AHs '20: Augmented Humans International Conference
      March 16 - 17, 2020
      Kaiserslautern, Germany

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      View all
      • (2023)Skinergy: Machine-Embroidered Silicone-Textile Composites as On-Skin Self-Powered Input SensorsProceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3586183.3606729(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
      • (2022)An Atlas for the Inkjet Printing of Large-Area Tactile SensorsSensors10.3390/s2206233222:6(2332)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2022
      • (2022)An Automated Room Temperature Flip-Chip Mounting Process for Hybrid Printed ElectronicsMicromachines10.3390/mi1304058313:4(583)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2022
      • (2021)Crafting On-Skin Interfaces: An Embodied Prototyping JourneyProceedings of the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3461778.3462055(1129-1142)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
      • (2021)A 10-Year Review of the Methods and Purposes of On-Skin Interface Research in ACM SIGCHIProceedings of the 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers10.1145/3460421.3480424(84-90)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2021
      • (2020)FLECTILEProceedings of the 2020 International Symposium on Wearable Computers10.1145/3410531.3414307(32-36)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2020

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