EmmaP Current Event Post

E-skin

Written By Meghan Rosen

November 30, 2015

The e-skin is an electronic skin that can feel textures, heat, and can even hear through vibrations.  The e-skin is made out of a rubbery plastic and carbon-film.  The discovery comes from a combination of electronics and biology.  Scientists have figured out how to imitate the human skin layers with artificial layers.  One scientist, Hyunhyub Ko and his team have developed the actual e-skin.  A materials scientist, Alex Chortos, has developed skin-to-cell communications.  One day when technology is advanced enough, these two elements could be put together and put over prosthetics.  Just like human skin, the e-skin sends signals to the brain.  This was explored using mice as a model.  With more pressure applied to the e-skin, a stronger signal is sent to the brain.  The e-skin can feel textures and heat, but can also hear.  Scientists think that the e-skin could be a good hearing aid because "it worked even better than an iPhone’s microphone."

This article connects to the cell unit we just started studying because one of the scientists has developed skin-to-cell communications.  Also, if the e-skin covers prosthetic limbs, in order for the e-skin to work, it would need to plug into people’s nerve cells.  The e-skin is good for our society because it will help people with damaged skin, prosthetics, and who can’t hear well.  The e-skin project also helps make scientific knowledge and technology broader because the scientists will make improvements on the project which will lead to new ideas and discoveries.  I chose this article because I had no idea what this e-skin thing was, and I wanted to know how it worked.  Some limitations in this discovery is figuring how to connect the e-skin and the cell communications into nerve cells.  In this article, I learned what e-skin was.  I had no idea that it existed or for that matter, what it did.  I also learned that the e-skin can hear even better than an iPhone’s microphone.  Another fact that I learned is that our fingertips had a rigid surface which is what the e-skin has to imitate with artificial layers.  Are the rigid surfaces on our fingertips fingerprints?

URL of Article: https://student.societyforscience.org/article/new-e-skin-feels-heat-textures-and-more