Reduction of appearance artifacts in wearable on-skin electronics
- Yijun Liu
- Soutaro Ito
- Takeo Kato
- Liren Wang
- Yicheng Zhu
- Séverine De Mulatier
- Hiroshi Arao
- Shugo Suwazono
- Hirotoshi Asano
- Yuanyuan Zhou
- Hinata Mitomo
- Huimin Gong
- Ohga Nomura
- Gakuto Kagawa
- Natsumi Watanabe
- Mohammad H. Behfar
- Yoshinori Kuroiwa
- Tetsu Tatsuma
- Yusuke Sugano
- Hidetoshi Takahashi
- Makoto Asai
- Jiheong Kang
- Naoji Matsuhisa
2026-07-15
Facial electrophysiological signals are crucial to human-machine interfaces and health care monitoring. Soft and skin-conformable electrodes enabled long-term and comfortable signal monitoring. However, the appearance of the electrodes affects the wearer’s social interactions and self-identity, making daily usage difficult and leaving appearance artifacts. Here, we developed fully invisible and unperceivable on-skin electrodes free from appearance artifacts. Neither the wearer nor observers can detect the visual and tactile presence of the electrodes on the skin. The unperceivable property was confirmed with sensory experiments and physical characterizations of the film on skin. Furthermore, our invisible electrodes did not affect the psychological conditions of the wearers, which confirms the feasibility of artifact-free monitoring in daily lives. Last, we demonstrated the functionality of our electrode with successful monitoring of various facial electrophysiological signals, including electrooculogram (EOG), electromyogram (EMG), and electroencephalogram (EEG). Our fully invisible electrodes provide a promising direction in developing on-skin bioelectronics, seamlessly integrating health monitoring and human-computer interaction technologies into people’s daily lives.