Visco‐Poroelastic Electrochemiluminescence Skin with Piezo‐Ionic Effect

Following early research efforts devoted to achieving excellent sensitivity of electronic skins, recent design schemes for these devices have focused on strategies for transduction of spatially resolved sensing data into straightforward user-adaptive visual signals. Here, a material platform capable of transducing mechanical stimuli into visual readout is presented. The material layer comprises a mixture of an ionic transition metal complex luminophore and an ionic liquid (capable of producing electrochemiluminescence (ECL)) within a thermoplastic polyurethane matrix. The proposed material platform shows visco-poroelastic response to mechanical stress, which induces a change in the distribution of the ionic luminophore in the film, which is referred to as the piezo-ionic effect. This piezo-ionic effect is exploited to develop a simple device containing the composite layer sandwiched betw…