Smart Core/shell nanorod arrays for artificial skin

Project Information

SmartCore

Grant agreement ID: 715403

DOI

10.3030/715403

Project closed

EC signature date 7 November 2016

Start date 1 December 2016

End date 30 November 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 108,76

EU contribution

€ 1 499 108,76

Coordinated by

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET GRAZ
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - SmartCore (Smart Core/shell nanorod arrays for artificial skin)

Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2022-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The skin of humans and animals constitutes a specialized, complex system where body-external world interactions take place and interplay. Stimuli are captured by the skin and transformed into real world information content. Despite advances in our understanding of mechano- and thermosensation, replication of these unique sensory characteristics in artificial skin remains challenging. The goal of this project is to integrate temperature, humidity and pressure sensing in a single novel artificial skin and achieve sensing with spatial resolution down to 1mm and lower.
Such skin, applied to advanced robot could revolutionize the interaction between humans and machines, making the latter smarter, more responsive, safer and more human friendly.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Materials responsive to temperature, humidity and pressure have been developed. In details, we have studied in which ranges of temperature, humidity and pressure our materials are sensitive, with which sensitivity amplitude and how fast they sense changes in these three stimuli. We have also developed an automated way to integrate the two materials together by developing a multi-chamber deposition system. The sensing materials were then deposited inside a nano template to create core-shell nanorods. The whole device showed response to temperature and humidity. The force could be sensed with a lateral resolution of 0,25 mm2 which is below the lateral resolution of human skin. The results have been published in open access scientific papers, reported in press releases and covered in several newspapers. Of particular relevance are the talks and exhibitions given at the event TEDxVienna (8 Oct 2022) and TEDxGraz (Nov 2016) and the films produced on the artificial skin device by ATV and Servus TV.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We demonstrated that hydrogel thin films synthesized by initiated chemical vapor deposition show fast and strong response to temperature in water vapor environment up to 200% of their thickness. In addition the thickness change depends on the rate at which the temperature is changing. This same class of materials can be used for drug delivery, another very important aspect for artificial skins. The drug release kinetics can be tuned by several orders of magnitude depending on the chemistry of the material. We progressed the state of art by studying the response kinetics to humidity, which is something on which not many papers focused before us. We also gave very important contributions to the state of art of controlled delivery from thin films.

We demonstrated that we can deposit ZnO by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition at room temperature. The ability to grow inorganic thin films with highly controllable structural and optical properties at low substrate temperature enables the manufacturing of functional devices on thermo-sensitive substrates without the need of material postprocessing. The piezoelectrical properties of ultra thin ZnO films were studied for the first time by our group. We demonstrated that the piezoelectric coefficient depends on the growth temperature of the ZnO layer and on the substrate where it was deposited.

Regarding the complete artificial skin device, comprised of ZnO and the hydrogel, we -for the first time- created a device that shows multi responsiveness at high resolution.

Artificial skin device. This image was used as frontispiece by Adv. Mater. Technol.

Talk at the TEDxVienna event

Team that worked on the final artificial skin device