I have two stories about electronic skin (e-skin or artificial skin), each featuring a very different approach to developing the technology.

Leather for electronic skin

Michael Berger’s May 28, 2025 Nanowerk Spotlight article provides context for the research into producing artificial (electronic) skin using leather as the base,

Flexible electronics are reshaping how humans interact with machines, creating new possibilities for systems that conform to the body and respond intelligently to physical stimuli. Among the most ambitious goals in this field is the development of electronic skin—e-skin—that replicates the sensory and protective functions of biological tissue.

Real skin does more than just sense touch; it buffers mechanical impacts, regulates temperature, and shields the body from harmful radiation. Replicating all these functions in a single synthetic material has proven technically complex. Most artificial skins focus narrowly on pressure sensing or surface temperature monitoring, often falling short when required to provide mechanical robustness or electromagnetic shielding.

A variety of material systems have been explored in pursuit of a true e-skin, including hydrogels, silicone elastomers, carbon nanotube composites, and layered polymer matrices. While many of these have achieved impressive sensitivity to pressure or temperature, their mechanical fragility, structural instability, or limited responsiveness under stress have restricted their practical use. Some efforts have turned to bio-derived substrates like cellulose or silk. Although lightweight and flexible, these materials are often fragile and lack the structural hierarchy needed for reliable multifunctionality.

Leather—processed animal skin—presents an intriguing alternative. It possesses intrinsic toughness, flexibility, and a multilayered collagen fiber structure that resembles the dermal framework of natural skin. Its use in clothing and protective gear underscores its reliability.

However, until now, efforts to adapt leather for flexible electronics have been hampered by poor structural integration, limited sensitivity under dynamic conditions, and weak electromagnetic shielding. These limitations have prevented leather from advancing beyond a passive substrate into a truly intelligent material capable of emulating skin’s full range of functions.

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Berger’s May 28, 2025 article goes on to describe a new approach to transforming leather into e-skin,

In a study published in Advanced Functional Materials (“Exceed the Traditional Dead Leather to Intelligent E‐Skin”), researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China and Hong Kong Baptist University present a leather-based composite that addresses these limitations. By integrating silver nanostructures and a viscoelastic polymer into natural leather, the team developed a multifunctional e-skin that unites pressure sensing, thermal control, impact protection, and electromagnetic shielding in a single material platform.

This composite, referred to as LAP (Leather/Ag/Polyborosiloxane Elastomer), mirrors the layered anatomy of human skin. The leather forms the outer protective surface, analogous to the epidermis. Embedded within this layer is a hybrid network of silver nanowires and silver flakes. These fill the gaps between collagen fibers, creating a dense, conductive network that functions like the skin’s dermis. The inner layer comprises a polyborosiloxane elastomer—a viscoelastic material that stiffens upon impact, much like the hypodermis’ role in absorbing mechanical shocks.

The conductive layer benefits from the combination of one-dimensional nanowires and two-dimensional flakes. The flakes act as broad conductive platforms while the nanowires link them, forming a three-dimensional network. This arrangement significantly enhances conductivity and mechanical cohesion. The optimal ratio of silver nanowires to flakes—determined to be 1:2—yielded both low resistance and high tensile strength. The material reached a tensile strength of 9.28 MPa at a silver content of 5.0 mg/cm², nearly doubling the strength of the underlying leather-polymer base. Fracture strains of up to 70.8% demonstrate the composite’s flexibility and capacity for wearable use.

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One of the most distinctive capabilities of the LAP e-skin is its dual-mode sensing response. Under slow compression, the conductive network densifies, reducing resistance and enabling precise piezoresistive sensing. The sensor detected strains as low as 2% with consistent signal output over 500 cycles. Under high-speed impact, however, the network momentarily fractures, increasing resistance instead. This difference allows the material to distinguish between light contact and sudden impacts, a feature that mimics how real skin perceives touch versus pain.

…

This study illustrates how biologically inspired materials can be reengineered to achieve functional integration across sensing, protection, and regulation domains. The choice to reconfigure leather—already optimized by evolution for wearability and toughness—provides a structurally rich and mechanically resilient platform. By layering conductive and responsive components onto this substrate, the researchers have constructed a versatile material that pushes the capabilities of e-skin systems toward those of natural tissue.

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If you have time, do read Berger’s May 28, 2025 article in its entirety.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the study,

Exceed the Traditional Dead Leather to Intelligent E-Skin by Yue Yao, Ziyang Fan, Xinglong Gong, Danyi Li, Wei Yang, Ken Cham-Fai Leung, Xinyi Wang, Shuai Liu, Junjie Yang, Shouhu Xuan. Advanced Functional Materials DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202500572 First published online: 24 May 2025

This paper is behind a paywall.

Graphene-based electronic skin

A June 24, 2025 Technical University of Denmark(DTU) press release (also on EurekAlert) announces a ‘graphene forward’ approach, Note: A link has been removed,

Researchers at DTU have made a significant achievement by developing a new kind of electronic material that behaves almost exactly like human skin. That kind of substance could be useful in soft robotics, medicine, and healthcare.

Picture electronic devices that heal the way our skin repairs itself. Researchers at DTU have developed a new material that makes it possible—a flexible, tough and self-healing material that may in future come into use in the healthcare sector, in robotics and much more. This new material overcomes the weaknesses of the rigid, brittle electronic materials currently used, which can’t repair themselves.

By dint of an innovative approach, the scientists at DTU have combined the exceptional properties of graphene, a two-dimensional carbon form that is extremely strong, and has great electrical conductivity, with the see-through polymer PEDOT: PSS, that is also electrically conductive and is, for example, used in flexible electronics and sometimes as transparent electrodes in solar cells. When these two parts are mixed, they turn what’s usually a weak, jellylike material into a solid, flexible, self-healing electronic material.

“The devices that exist today and have self-healing, soft, and responsive properties often fail to seamlessly integrate all these attributes into a single, scalable, and cohesive platform. And that is what I believe we have accomplished,” says Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz, Associate Professor at DTU Health Tech and lead author of a recent paper in Advanced Science, detailing their accomplishment: Self‐Maintainable Electronic Materials with Skin‐Like Characteristics Enabled by Graphene‐PEDOT:PSS Fillers.

“Our skin-inspired material is multifunctional, endowed with the desired tactile properties, specifically designed for the usage of electronic devices. This may open the doors to the more advanced and versatile technologies that could more closely mingle with the human body and the surroundings.”

Flexible and self-repairing

Among the most promising attributes of the new material is its ability to self-heal. If it is damaged, it can heal in a matter of seconds, the way the human skin heals after, say, a cut. On top of that, the material is extremely malleable and can be stretched up to six times beyond its original length and still bounce back. This makes it well suited for integration within wearable and soft robotic devices, which require that materials can be moved and bent without diminishing their performance.

It can also control heat and detect a range of environmental factors, such as pressure, temperature and pH levels, which could make it beneficial for health monitoring systems that must keep track of vital signs and adjust to body changes.

Electronics built from this material could therefore be amorphous and shape-changing, capable of adapting to their environment, the researchers say, and able to recover from damage the way biological systems do.

“The fact that the material can self-heal, regulate heat, and monitor vital signs makes it suitable to be used in a large range of equipments, says Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz:

“Space suits spring to mind, but I believe that we will find the most relevant uses for the individual citizen within healthcare. We could, for instance, incorporate it in bandages that would monitor how a wound is healing, or in devices that continuously track heart rate and temperature. The stretchable nature of the material makes it ideal for minimally invasive surgery or implantable applications. And we could easily imagine prosthetics that are more comfortable to wear and have better performance.”

At present, the researchers are continuing their work and investigating methods to make it on a larger scale, aimed at setting the stage for real-life applications.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Self-Maintainable Electronic Materials with Skin-Like Characteristics Enabled by Graphene-PEDOT:PSS Fillers by Morteza Alehosseini, Firoz Babu Kadumudi, Sinziana Revesz, Parham Karimi Reikandeh, Jonas Rosager Henriksen, Tiberiu-Gabriel Zsurzsan, Jon Spangenberg, Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz. Advanced Science DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202410539 First published online: 25 April 2025

This paper is open access.

What is that old saying, “there’s more than one way to … .”