Korean researchers develop electronic skin that recovers within 10 seconds even if it is torn
Mar 19, 2025
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The Korea Research Foundation said University of Seoul Professor Kim Hyuk's research team has developed an ultra-fast self-healing electronic skin that can restore more than 80% of functions within 10 seconds without external stimulation. Through this, it was confirmed that real-time biosignal monitoring and AI-based muscle fatigue evaluation technology can be implemented.
Electronic skin that mimics human skin is one of the most advanced forms of wearable devices and is highly utilized in the healthcare field. When attached to the human body, various functions are being developed, such as feeling tactile, monitoring bio-signals, and treating wounds at the attachment site. However, it is vulnerable to mechanical damage such as friction, tearing, and scratches that occur during repeated use, making it difficult to wear for a long time and inevitably deteriorating performance in case of damage. Until now, electronic skin that recovers 80% of the damage is known, but it took a minute to recover, so the measurement was cut off, and external stimuli such as heat and light were needed when recovering, which was a stumbling block to practical use.
The research team synthesized various compounds to implement optimal conditions to improve the self-healing performance of electronic skin. It is designed to introduce disulfide compounds to flexible thermoplastic polyurethane to form disulfide bonds that can re-bond themselves without external stimulation. For high resilience, compounds with high molecular mobility were added to maximize self-healing ability.
The self-healing electronic skin developed in this way showed the performance of restoring more than 80% function within 10 seconds at room temperature. It was confirmed that EMG and ECG can be measured stably even in extreme environments such as high temperature, high humidity, low temperature, and underwater, and that the signal remains stable after self-healing even after damage. Furthermore, we also succeeded in experiments to monitor real-time muscle fatigue by combining electronic skin sensors with deep learning-based big data analysis models.
The research results, which were carried out with the support of mid-sized research projects promoted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Research Foundation, were published last month in the international journal 『Science Advances』.
Professor Kim Hyuk said, `This study is expected to contribute to the development and commercialization of next-generation wearable medical technology by solving major challenges in self-healing electronic skin" he said.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
