Neurological electronic skin (E-skin) can process and transmit information in a distributed manner that achieves effective stimuli perception, holding great promise in neuroprosthetics and soft robotics. Neurological E-skin with multifunctional perception abilities can enable robots to precisely interact with the complex surrounding environment. However, current neurological E-skins that possess tactile, thermal, and visual perception abilities are usually prepared with rigid materials, bringing difficulties in realizing biologically synapse-like softness. Here, we report a soft multifunctional neurological E-skin (SMNE) comprised of a poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) nanofiber polymer semiconductor-based stretchable synaptic transistor and multiple soft artificial sensory receptors, which is capable of effectively perceiving force, thermal, and light stimuli. The stretchable synaptic transistor can convert electrical signals into transient channel currents analogous to the biological excitatory postsynaptic currents. And it also possesses both short-term and long-term synaptic plasticity that mimics the human memory system. By integrating a stretchable triboelectric nanogenerator, a soft thermoelectric device, and an elastic photodetector as artificial receptors, we further developed an SMNE that enables the robot to make precise actions in response to various surrounding stimuli. Compared with traditional neurological E-skin, our SMNE can maintain the softness and adaptability of biological synapses while perceiving multiple stimuli including force, temperature, and light. This SMNE could promote the advancement of E-skins for intelligent robot applications.

In engineering practice, the output performance of contact separation TENGs (CS-TENGs) increases with the increase of tribo-pair area, which includes increasing the size of single layer CS-TENGs (SCS-TENGs) or the number of units (zigzag TENGs). However, such two strategies show significant differences in output power and power density. In this study, to seek a universal CS-TENG design solution, the output performance of a SCS-TENG and a zigzag TENG (Z-TENG) is systematically compared, including voltage, current, transferred charge, instantaneous power density, and charging power density. The relationship between contact area and output voltages is explored, and the output voltage equation is fitted. The experimental results reveal that SCS-TENGs yield better performance than Z-TENGs in terms of voltage, power, and power density under the same total contact area. Z-TENGs show energy loss during the transfer of mechanical energy, and such loss is aggravated by the increasing number of units. The instantaneous peak power of the SCS-TENG is up to 22 times that of the Z-TENG (45 cm²). Furthermore, the power density of capacitor charging of SCS-TENGs is 131% of that of Z-TENGs, which are relatively close. Z-TENG is a feasible alternative when the working space is limited.