Ultratough, Stretchable Silk Protein Fibrous Membranes for Robust and Permeable Epidermal Bioelectronic Sensors

ABSTRACT Epidermal bioelectronics hinges critically on the skin‐adaptive and robust device‐epidermal interface, creating a high demand for soft functional polymers. Natural biopolymers like silk are ideal interfacing materials due to their biocompatibility and sustainability, yet engineering them into tough, thin, and permeable membranes adapting to skin remains a challenge. To overcome this, we report an ultratough and stretchable silk protein fibrous membrane (SPFM). Through a combined strategy of electrospinning and hygroscopicity‐driven crystallization, ionic‐conductive SPFM is engineered with a hierarchical architecture composing of aligned microfibers and a randomly entangled peptide network sparsely crosslinked by β ‐sheet nanocrystals, overcoming the intrinsic brittleness of natural silk. The resulting SPFM with a thickness of ≈19 µm, exhibits a fracture strain of 220%, a fracture stress of 9.88 MPa, a toughness of 14.97 MJ m −3 , and an ultrahigh fracture energy of 98.18 kJ m −2 based on special crack deflection mechanism. As skin‐adaptive and permeable sensors, SPFM reliably monitors body motions and bioelectric signals with high fidelity, achieving electromyographic recording with a high signal‐to‐noise ratio (>45 dB) during dynamic movements. Dual‐channel electromyographic recording assisted by machine learning, demonstrates 98.91% accuracy in gesture recognition, highlighting the potential of high‐performance biopolymer epidermal electronics for human‐machine interaction applications.

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Publication Details

Journal
Advanced Functional Materials
Published
2026-04-23
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.75582
Primary Topic
Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Ultratough, Stretchable Silk Protein Fibrous Membranes for Robust and Permeable Epidermal Bioelectronic Sensors

Xiao‐Qiao Wang, Shenzhou Lu, Ghim Wei Ho, Jie Yang et al.
Advanced Functional Materials
Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
article

Ultratough, Stretchable Silk Protein Fibrous Membranes for Robust and Permeable Epidermal Bioelectronic Sensors

Xiao‐Qiao Wang, Shenzhou Lu, Ghim Wei Ho, Jie Yang, Pengle Cao, Yuxing Wang, Yuzhe Zhong, Xihua Pan, Haitao Yang, Yongjia Li, Xinglong Pan
article en

Abstract

ABSTRACT Epidermal bioelectronics hinges critically on the skin‐adaptive and robust device‐epidermal interface, creating a high demand for soft functional polymers. Natural biopolymers like silk are ideal interfacing materials due to their biocompatibility and sustainability, yet engineering them into tough, thin, and permeable membranes adapting to skin remains a challenge. To overcome this, we report an ultratough and stretchable silk protein fibrous membrane (SPFM). Through a combined strategy of electrospinning and hygroscopicity‐driven crystallization, ionic‐conductive SPFM is engineered with a hierarchical architecture composing of aligned microfibers and a randomly entangled peptide network sparsely crosslinked by β ‐sheet nanocrystals, overcoming the intrinsic brittleness of natural silk. The resulting SPFM with a thickness of ≈19 µm, exhibits a fracture strain of 220%, a fracture stress of 9.88 MPa, a toughness of 14.97 MJ m −3 , and an ultrahigh fracture energy of 98.18 kJ m −2 based on special crack deflection mechanism. As skin‐adaptive and permeable sensors, SPFM reliably monitors body motions and bioelectric signals with high fidelity, achieving electromyographic recording with a high signal‐to‐noise ratio (>45 dB) during dynamic movements. Dual‐channel electromyographic recording assisted by machine learning, demonstrates 98.91% accuracy in gesture recognition, highlighting the potential of high‐performance biopolymer epidermal electronics for human‐machine interaction applications.

Advanced Functional Materials
National University of Singapore (SG), Northwestern Polytechnical University (CN), Soochow University (CN), Henan Institute of Education (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Responsible consumption and production
Openalex Percentile: Top 16%
Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
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