Jellyfish-inspired electronic skin made by researchers heals itself, resists water

Jellyfish. They swim, they sting, they kill. And when they aren’t doing any of that, they are a muse for engineers to develop water-resistant touchscreens and soft robots that can take a swim without meeting their doom.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have created electronic ‘skin’ modeled on the underwater invertebrates. The material is transparent, flexible, stretchable, touch-sensitive, and can even self-heal in aquatic environments, much like some underwater invertebrates can.

They hoped to replicate one aspect of jellyfish skin above all else: its natural water-resistant yet touch-sensitive nature. It was created by printing the skin into electronic circuits.

Being a soft and stretchable material, the electrical properties of the e-skin change when touched, pressed or strained. This is something that can be measured.

Self-healing electronics are not common, and there are multiple challenges need to be overcome before they grow in popularity and interest. The biggest of these is that the materials are rarely transparent and tend not to work to their capacity when wet, according to  Professor Benjamin Tee, lead engineer of the project.

“These drawbacks make them less useful for electronic applications such as touchscreens which often need to be used in wet weather conditions,”  Tee  told Engineering & Technology. 

Technology like soft robots and electronics are designed to mimic biological tissue so they are more suited for man-machine interaction. The technology isn’t merely a soft robot but novel for its water-resistant and amphibious robotic design.

A big potential advantage of self-healing electronic skin in the future is in waste reduction.

India alone produces 2 millions tonnes of electronic waste from broken mobile phones, tablets, computers and larger appliances every year, a United Nations report  claims.

“We are hoping to create a future where electronic devices made from intelligent materials can perform self-repair functions to reduce the amount of electronic waste in the world,” Tee said.

So far, the application of the electronic skin has only made it to optoelectronic devices that could sneak their way into man-machine communication interfaces.