Triboelectric Topological Ion Effect for Highly Sensitive Tactile Sensing.

Abstract

With the rapid development of flexible electronics and intelligent robotics, highly sensitive tactile sensing systems have become crucial for human-machine interactions and object recognition. However, achieving high sensitivity and mechanical robustness simultaneously remains a major challenge. Herein, we develop a topological interface engineering strategy to construct a polymer hydrogel with a multiscale topological architecture via the competitive regulation of interfacial hydrogen bonding. The resulting gel exhibits excellent mechanical adaptability with high compressive strength (417 kPa) and tensile strength (4.9 MPa). Under compression, confined ions within the topological channels undergo nonuniform migration and localized enrichment, inducing polarization effects that enhance the interfacial charge storage and separation. The triboelectric tactile sensor achieves a sensitivity of 6.278 V kPa-1 and rapid response/recovery times of 125/84 ms, enabling self-powered human-machine interaction and object recognition. This work provides a new structural design paradigm and a mechanistic regulation strategy for intelligent tactile sensing systems.