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Polymer-based Artificial Skin for the Robotic Application
Skin, the largest organ of human body, consisting mainly the two layers i.e., outermost epidermis over underlying dermis, protects the interior organs and transduces various tactile stimuli (e.g., mechanical force, vibration, temperature, etc.) from external environment. During social interaction humans extract important informations of these stimuli for their recognition and discrimination purposes. Mimicking of human skin via integration of electronics within the flexible substrate having skin like physical properties (e.g., rheology, tribology, moisture absorptivity, mechanical property, etc.) is a topic of innovative research because of its promise for broad applications in robotics, artificial intelligence, and human–machine interfaces, all of which promote the development of artificial skin (alias, electronic skin (e-skin)). Keeping an eye on future artificial skin for different biomedical applications, here we have introduced the flexible, biocompatible thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) having human skin simulative hydration effect, which doesn’t require any hazardous solvent for processing purposes but can be thermally processed. Instead of incorporating any external sensing material (e.g., traditionally used piezoelectric component), we have modified the TPU using different techniques such as compounding, supercritical fluid foaming and 3D printing to enabling TPU-based human skin like flexible and positive triboelectric all-in-one e-skin material. Tactile sensations of the e-skin materials based single electrode triboelectric nanogenerator (S-TENG) like devices (which work on the basis of contact electrification and electrostatic induction method) towards the objects of different triboelectric properties viz., skin of bare human finger, polymeric materials (i.e., rubber gloves, cotton gloves, polyimide, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), etc.), ceramic material (i.e., glass), metal (i.e., Al-foil), etc. have been optimized using Oscilloscope and the discrimination (i.e., object manipulation) aptitude of the S-TENGs have been visualized by employing principle component analysis (PCA) on the respective triboelectic responses. S-TENGs were fabricated by attaching one induction electrode (i.e., a copper wire using silver paste) on a single surface of the modified TPU substrates. Firstly, considering the keratin-elastin composition of human epidermis we have developed an e-skin (i.e., TPK) by melt-mixing of bio-waste human hair keratin with TPU, which not only shows skin like mechanical property, tribological property (i.e., friction property), rheological property (i.e., viscoelasticity), morphology (i.e., porosity), hydration effect (i.e., water contact angle), skin like positive triboelectric property, etc., but also the TPK-based S-TENG well discriminates among the various tactile sensations provided by different materials. Secondly, inspired by epidermis-dermis composition of human-skin, we have developed a light-weight, robust, flexible and conformable S-TENG based prototype of bi-layer artificial-skin, by attaching one induction electrode with unfoamed skin layer of microcellular TPU foam, which shows high performance object manupulation towards the different objects. Comparative foaming behavior of eco-friendly supercritical fluids viz., CO2 over N2 under variable temperatures (e.g., 130 °C and 150 °C) and constant pressure (15 Mpa) have been examined to pursue the soft and flexible triboelectric TPU foam. The foam derived by CO2-foaming at 150 °C has been prioritized for development of effective S-TENG. Moreover, TPK-based 3D-printed artificial skin was prepared using fused deposition modelling (FDM) technology. Inspired by the potential performances of both the TPK-film and TPU-foam, 3D-printing technique has been attempted here to fabricate a multilayer skin structure of those TPU-materials towards the development of low-cost, time resolved, robust and embedded e-skin for futuristic robotic applications.