The material is built using semiconductor nanowires that can operate using low voltages, and it's more flexible than previous inorganic synthetic skins. This "e-skin" is also stronger than its competing organic materials. Organic materials are also poor semiconductors, and require a higher voltage to operate. The Berkeley group's synthetic skin can either be transferred to another material like a plastic or glass by either directly transferring it over from a flat substrate which is then ?rubbed? onto a polymer film made of polyamide. It can also be ?rolled? onto the surface using a device that works much like a lint roller in reverse; the fibers are deposited to a sticky surface rather than picked up.
The e-skin can detect pressure in the range from 0 to 15 kilopascals, or similar to the pressure needed to perform normal daily tasks. In other words, when your cyber-being goes to clean the wine glasses from last night's party, it won't break them, and when your robot goes to make you a sandwich, it won't flatten it to the size of your silicon microprocessor.
The e-skin will be described in a September 12 paper in the advanced online publication of the journal Nature Materials; co-authors include researchers from electrical engineering and computer sciences: Kuniharu Takei, post-doc fellow; Ron Fearing, professor; Toshitake Takahashi, grad student; Hyunhyub Ko and Paul Leu, post-doc researchers; Johnny C. Ho, grad student in materials science and engineering, and Andrew G. Gillies, a grad student in mechanical engineering.
[UC Berkeley]
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