Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

Biomedical engineering

Slime-like hydrogel-based e-skin patch for sensing human health

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume 2, page 373 (2025)Cite this article

Subjects

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

Conventional mechanical ‘electronic skin’ (‘e-skin’) patches have been long investigated and used in various fields of modern healthcare, including for health monitoring devices, smart drug delivery and nano-biosystems. However, they are characterized by several drawbacks, such as hindering movement, being rigid and heavy, and lacking adhesive and antibacterial properties. It is thus a goal to develop e-skin patches capable of simulating human skin characteristics in terms of high flexibility, stretchability, strong adhesion and, possibly, self-healing properties. Now, writing in Advanced Functional Materials, Hojin Kim and colleagues present a soft hydrogel-based e-skin patch that adheres to the body like skin and is capable of sensing human body motion, temperature and humidity.

Thanks to its self-healing effects, the patch can be reused multiple times, maintaining stable sensing performance even after more than 100 cycles of cutting and reattachment. Notably, this bioinspired hydrogel-based e-skin patch is non-invasive, mechanically robust, flexible and biocompatible with human skin cells. Being printable and highly conductive, the patch can be potentially applied in healthcare monitoring or as a wound-healing patch in clinical settings.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

Original article

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Communications Biology https://www.nature.com/commsbio/

    Ophelia Bu

Authors
  1. Ophelia Bu
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ophelia Bu.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bu, O. Slime-like hydrogel-based e-skin patch for sensing human health. Nat Rev Electr Eng 2, 373 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-025-00186-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-025-00186-2

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing