Bioinspired Composite Microfibers for Skin Adhesion and Signal Amplification of Wearable Sensors

Dirk-M. Drotlef, Morteza Amjadi, Muhammad Yunusa, Metin Sitti

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

230 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A facile approach is proposed for superior conformation and adhesion of wearable sensors to dry and wet skin. Bioinspired skin‐adhesive films are composed of elastomeric microfibers decorated with conformal and mushroom‐shaped vinylsiloxane tips. Strong skin adhesion is achieved by crosslinking the viscous vinylsiloxane tips directly on the skin surface. Furthermore, composite microfibrillar adhesive films possess a high adhesion strength of 18 kPa due to the excellent shape adaptation of the vinylsiloxane tips to the multiscale roughness of the skin. As a utility of the skin‐adhesive films in wearable‐device applications, they are integrated with wearable strain sensors for respiratory and heart‐rate monitoring. The signal‐to‐noise ratio of the strain sensor is significantly improved to 59.7 because of the considerable signal amplification of microfibrillar skin‐adhesive films.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1701353
JournalAdvanced Materials
Volume29
Issue number28
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jul 2017

Keywords

  • gecko-inspired adhesives
  • microfibers
  • skin adhesives
  • strain sensors
  • wearable sensors

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