Surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy provides a noninvasive and highly sensitive route for fingerprint and label‐free detection of a wide range of molecules. Recently, flexible SERS has attracted increasingly tremendous research interest due to its unique advantages compared to rigid substrate‐based SERS. Here, the latest advances in flexible substrate‐based SERS diagnostic devices are investigated in‐depth. First, the intriguing prospect of point‐of‐care diagnostics is briefly described, followed by an introduction to the cutting‐edge SERS technique. Then, the focus is moved from conventional rigid substrate‐based SERS to the emerging flexible SERS technique. The main part of this report highlights the recent three categories of flexible SERS substrates, including actively tunable SERS, swab‐sampling strategy, and the in situ SERS detection approach. Furthermore, other promising means of flexible SERS are also introduced. The flexible SERS substrates with low‐cost, batch‐fabrication, and easy‐to‐operate characteristics can be integrated into portable Raman spectroscopes for point‐of‐care diagnostics, which are conceivable to penetrate global markets and households as next‐generation wearable sensors in the near future.

Skin‐inspired wearable devices hold great potentials in the next generation of smart portable electronics owing to their intriguing applications in healthcare monitoring, soft robotics, artificial intelligence, and human–machine interfaces. Despite tremendous research efforts dedicated to judiciously tailoring wearable devices in terms of their thickness, portability, flexibility, bendability as well as stretchability, the emerging Internet of Things demand the skin‐interfaced flexible systems to be endowed with additional functionalities with the capability of mimicking skin‐like perception and beyond. This review covers and highlights the latest advances of burgeoning multifunctional wearable electronics, primarily including versatile multimodal sensor systems, self‐healing material‐based devices, and self‐powered flexible sensors. To render the penetration of human‐interactive devices into global markets and households, economical manufacturing techniques are crucial to achieve large‐scale flexible systems with high‐throughput capability. The booming innovations in this research field will push the scientific community forward and benefit human beings in the near future.

In the past decade, the global industry and research attentions on intelligent skin-like electronics have boosted their applications in diverse fields including human healthcare, Internet of Things, human–machine interfaces, artificial intelligence and soft robotics. Among them, flexible humidity sensors play a vital role in noncontact measurements relying on the unique property of rapid response to humidity change. This work presents an overview of recent advances in flexible humidity sensors using various active functional materials for contactless monitoring. Four categories of humidity sensors are highlighted based on resistive, capacitive, impedance-type and voltage-type working mechanisms. Furthermore, typical strategies including chemical doping, structural design and Joule heating are introduced to enhance the performance of humidity sensors. Drawing on the noncontact perception capability, human/plant healthcare management, human–machine interactions as well as integrated humidity sensor-based feedback systems are presented. The burgeoning innovations in this research field will benefit human society, especially during the COVID-19 epidemic, where cross-infection should be averted and contactless sensation is highly desired.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates based on chemical mechanism (CM) have received widespread attentions for the stable and repeatable signal output due to their excellent chemical stability, uniform molecular adsorption and controllable molecular orientation. However, it remains huge challenges to achieve the optimal SERS signal for diverse molecules with different band structures on the same substrate. Herein, we demonstrate a graphene oxide (GO) energy band regulation strategy through ferroelectric polarization to facilitate the charge transfer process for improving SERS activity. The Fermi level (E_f) of GO can be flexibly manipulated by adjusting the ferroelectric polarization direction or the temperature of the ferroelectric substrate. Experimentally, kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) is employed to quantitatively analyze the E_f of GO. Theoretically, the density functional theory calculations are also performed to verify the proposed modulation mechanism. Consequently, the SERS response of probe molecules with different band structures (R6G, CV, MB, PNTP) can be improved through polarization direction or temperature changes without the necessity to redesign the SERS substrate. This work provides a novel insight into the SERS substrate design based on CM and is expected to be applied to other two-dimensional materials.