Researchers give artificial skin sense of touch

The work, which is reported in the journal Science, was led by Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford who has spent a decade working on the development of artificial skin. Prof Bao hopes one day to create a flexible electronic fabric embedded with sensors that could cover a prosthetic limb and replicate some of skin’s sensory functions.

At the heart of the technique is a two-ply plastic construct: the top layer creates a sensing mechanism and the bottom layer acts as the circuit to transport electrical signals and translate them into biochemical stimuli compatible with nerve cells.

The top layer features a sensor that can detect pressure over the same range as human skin from a light finger tap to a firm handshake.

Bao’s team has previously demonstrated how to use plastics and rubbers as pressure sensors by measuring the natural springiness of their molecular structures. They then increased this natural pressure sensitivity by indenting a waffle pattern into the thin plastic, which further compresses the plastic’s molecular springs.