Artificial hairs provide added sensitivity to e-skin

Surface hairs perceive and anticipate the tactile sensation on human skin and even recognise the direction of touch, but modern electronic skin systems lack this capability and cannot gather this information about their vicinity.

Now, a research team led by Prof. Dr. Oliver G. Schmidt, head of the Professorship of Material Systems for Nanoelectronics and Scientific Director of the Research Center for Materials, Architectures and Integration of Nanomembranes (MAIN) at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, has adopted a new approach to the development of extremely sensitive and direction-dependent 3D magnetic field sensors that can be integrated into an e-skin system (active matrix). The team’s findings are reported in Nature Communications.

In a statement, Christian Becker, a PhD student at MAIN and first author of the study said: "Our approach allows a precise spatial arrangement of functional sensor elements in 3D that can be mass-produced in a parallel manufacturing process. Such sensor systems are extremely difficult to generate by established microelectronic fabrication methods."