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. 2019 Sep 5;10:4019. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11973-5

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© The Author(s) 2019

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 1 — Conceptual design of SMHIP and ionic mechanoreceptor skin. a Schematic of a biological multicellular structure. Inset is the close view of cell membrane. b Schematic of human skin as a multicellular organ consisting of various mechanoreceptor cells. Inset shows a close view of an individual mechanoreceptor’s cell membrane before external stimulus. A polarized resting membrane potential is maintained across the cell membrane due to the concentration gradient of Na⁺ and K⁺ ions. c Schematic of human skin under deformation. Inset is the detailed view of an individual mechanoreceptor’s cell membrane under deformation. Pumping of Na⁺ ions through ion channels across the cell membrane results in depolarization of mechanoreceptor cell membrane and establishment of action potential. d Design of a SMHIP composed of IL ([EMIM⁺][TFSI⁻], cation–anion pairs) confined on the surface of silica microstructures (as artificial cells) dispersed in TPU elastomer composed of hard and soft segments (as extracellular matrix). Silica surface silanol groups are engaged in H-bonding interactions (black dotted lines) with TPU polymer chains, which directly mimic the biological integrins. Inset on the left is the schematic illustration of an artificial plasma membrane consisting of stepwise layers of TFSI⁻ anions tethered on the surface of silica microspheres via H-bonds with silanol groups (inset right), surrounded by EMIM⁺ cations driven by the Coulomb force with the anions. Lowermost inset is the schematic of chemical and segmented representation of TPU. e Design of piezocapacitive ionic skin composed of SMHIP film (IL–silica microstructures as artificial mechanoreceptor cells) sandwiched between silver nanowires/PDMS flexible electrodes with a voltage of 1 mV to 1 V. Inset is the close view of artificial mechanoreceptor’s plasma membrane under equilibrium. Ionic species are confined via H-bonds. f Schematic of ionic mechanoreceptor skin under deformation. Inset is the close view of artificial mechanoreceptor’s plasma membrane. Pumping of ions from the surface of silica microstructure due to pressure induced breaking of H-bonds (between TFSI⁻ and silanol groups) and establishment of EDL at SMHIP/electrode interfaces. g Brief schematic of SMHIP preparation. h Photo image of SMHIP film (2 cm × 2 cm, yellow box) placed on HANYANG UNIVERSITY logo, indicating high transparency