Stanford engineers have created a plastic "skin" that can detect how hard it is being pressed and generate an electric signal to deliver this sensory² input³ directly to a living brain cell. Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford, has spent a decade trying to develop a material that mimics⁴ skin's ability to flex⁵ and heal, while also serving as the sensor¹ net that sends touch, temperature and pain signals to the brain. Ultimately she wants to create a flexible electronic fabric⁶ embedded⁷ with sensors⁸ that could cover a prosthetic limb and replicate⁹ some of skin's sensory functions.

 

Bao's work, reported today in Science, takes another step toward her goal by replicating¹⁰ one aspect of touch, the sensory mechanism¹¹ that enables us to distinguish the pressure difference between a limp handshake and a firm grip.

 

"This is the first time a flexible, skin-like material has been able to detect pressure and also transmit a signal to a component¹² of the nervous system," said Bao, who led the 17-person research team responsible for the achievement.

 

Benjamin Tee, a recent doctoral graduate in electrical engineering; Alex Chortos, a doctoral candidate in materials science and engineering; and Andre Berndt, a postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering, were the lead authors on the Science paper.

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