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Skin-Inspired Controllable Microcrack Electronic Skin with High Signal-to-Noise Ratio for High-Fidelity Pulse Wave Monitoring

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Abstract

Wearable electronic skin (E-skin) with high sensitivity and stable response characteristics holds significant promise for human body monitoring. To address the critical bottleneck of stochastic microcrack morphology and poor structural controllability inherent in conventional MXene-based microcrack sensors, we present a skin-inspired, hierarchically structured E-skin in which ordered regulation of MXene microcracks is achieved through a pre-stretching–spray-coating coupling strategy. Benefiting from the synergistic interplay between structural engineering and conductive pathway modulation, the device achieves a sensitivity of 6.17 kPa–1 over a pressure range of 0–60 kPa, along with a cycling stability exceeding 12000 loading–unloading cycles, a rapid response time of 40 ms, and a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 30.64 dB. By combining discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for multi-scale analysis of radial and carotid arterial pulse signals, a dominant frequency of approximately 1.3 Hz (78 bpm) was extracted, validating the device’s high-resolution capability for detecting subtle physiological signals. This MXene-based microcrack E-skin offers a novel technical approach for the controllable fabrication of microcracks and demonstrates considerable potential for applications in wearable medical monitoring.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the Fujian Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, Project of Key Technology Research and Industrialization for Digital Transformation: Solution and Industrial Implementation of Real-Time Fabric Defect Monitoring in Textile Processes Using Galaxy Large Model-Based AI Technology (No. 03); Commissioned Project by Quanzhou Peak Shoes Co., Ltd. (CN) [2021KH20]; and The Open Competition Mechanism Project of Science and Technology Department of Quanzhou City [2022GZ4]. This work was also supported by the Technology Planning Project of Shaoxing (No. 2024A13003).

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Weili Zhao contributed to writing, original draft, conceptualization, investigation, methodology, visualization, and data curation. Vuong Dinh Trung contributed to investigation, methodology, and writing, review and editing. Yinjia Zhang contributed to investigation and methodology. Xinghua Hong performed formal analysis and validation. Xiuping Su contributed to writing, review and editing, supervision, and resources. Lina Cui contributed to supervision, investigation, and resources. Xiangyang Liu was involved in writing, review and editing, supervision, and funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Weili Zhao, Xinghua Hong, Lina Cui or Xiangyang Liu.

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Zhao, W., Trung, V.D., Zhang, Y. et al. Skin-Inspired Controllable Microcrack Electronic Skin with High Signal-to-Noise Ratio for High-Fidelity Pulse Wave Monitoring. Adv. Fiber Mater. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-026-00763-6

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  1. Weili Zhao
  2. Vuong Dinh Trung
  3. Xinghua Hong
  4. Xiangyang Liu