Plastic ‘skin’ developed
Researchers from Stanford University in California have made a major breakthrough in attempts to make a skin that mimics the skin’s ability to sense touch, temperature and pain.
The plastic skin is made of two layers. The top layer creates a sensing mechanism, while the bottom layer transmits electrical signals into biochemical stimuli for nerve cells to receive.
The plastic skin can detect pressure like that of the human skin, from a light finger tap to a firm handshake.
‘This is the first time a flexible, skin-like material has been able to detect pressure and also transmit a signal to a component of the nervous system,’ said professor Zhenan Bao from the university’s department of chemical engineering, who led the 17-person research team.
The team at Stanford first used plastic as a pressure sensor five years ago, by measuring the natural springiness of their molecular structures. Now though, they have exploited this by scattering billions of one-atom thick grapheme tubes through the plastic. This allows the plastic skins to mimic human skin, which transmits pressure information as short pulses of electricity, similar to Morse code, to the brain.
Prosthetic limbs could soon be designed with a sense of touch now that the scientists have developed the revolutionary plastic ‘skin’.
Written by: Dr. Ajay Sati.
