Flexible tactile sensors with high force sensitivities have gained great attentions in the fields of wearable devices, robotic skins, and biomedical diagnostics. In human fingertip skins, fingerprint patterns and interlocked epidermal-dermal microridges have critical roles in amplifying and transferring tactile signals to various mechanoreceptors, enabling spatio-temporal perception of various static and dynamic tactile signals. Here, mimicking the structures and functions of fingertip skin, we introduce highly-sensitive, multifunctional, and stretchable electronic skins.

Inspired by the interlocked microstructures found in epidermal-dermal ridges in human skin, piezoresistive interlocked microdomes are employed for the demonstration of stress-direction-sensitive, stretchable electronic skins. We show that interlocked microdome arrays possess highly direction-sensitive detection capability of various mechanical stimuli including normal, shear, stretching, bending, and twisting forces. We also demonstrate that ferroelectric skins with fingerprint-like patterns and interlocked microstructures can detect and discriminate multiple spatio-temporal tactile stimuli including static and dynamic pressure, vibration, and temperature with high sensitivities. For applications, we demonstrate that stretchable electronic skins attached on the human skin can be used as wearable healthcare monitoring devices, which are able to distinguish various mechanical stimuli applied in different directions, selectively monitor different intensities and directions of air flows and vibrations, and sensitively monitor human breathing flows and voice vibrations. In addition, dynamic touch sensing ability is employed for the precise detection of acoustic sounds, and discrimination of various surface textures. Finally, for multifunctional wearable and skin-attachable devices, we show smart adhesive pads with temperature-responsive adhesion properties and force-dependent color changing touch screens based on mechanochromic surface coatings.