Artificial synaptic devices that can be stretched similar to those appearing in soft-bodied animals, such as earthworms, could be seamlessly integrated onto soft machines toward enabled neurological functions. Here, we report a stretchable synaptic transistor fully based on elastomeric electronic materials, which exhibits a full set of synaptic characteristics. These characteristics retained even the rubbery synapse that is stretched by 50%. By implementing stretchable synaptic transistor with mechanoreceptor in an array format, we developed a deformable sensory skin, where the mechanoreceptors interface the external stimulations and generate presynaptic pulses and then the synaptic transistors render postsynaptic potentials. Furthermore, we demonstrated a soft adaptive neurorobot that is able to perform adaptive locomotion based on robotic memory in a programmable manner upon physically tapping the skin. Our rubbery synaptic transistor and neurologically integrated devices pave the way toward enabled neurological functions in soft machines and other applications.

Characterization of temperature and thermal transport properties of the skin can yield important information of relevance to both clinical medicine and basic research in skin physiology. Here we introduce an ultrathin, compliant skin-like, or 'epidermal', photonic device that combines colorimetric temperature indicators with wireless stretchable electronics for thermal measurements when softly laminated on the skin surface. The sensors exploit thermochromic liquid crystals patterned into large-scale, pixelated arrays on thin elastomeric substrates; the electronics provide means for controlled, local heating by radio frequency signals. Algorithms for extracting patterns of colour recorded from these devices with a digital camera and computational tools for relating the results to underlying thermal processes near the skin surface lend quantitative value to the resulting data. Application examples include non-invasive spatial mapping of skin temperature with milli-Kelvin precision ( ± 50 mK) and sub-millimetre spatial resolution. Demonstrations in reactive hyperaemia assessments of blood flow and hydration analysis establish relevance to cardiovascular health and skin care, respectively.

Octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and other cephalopods exhibit exceptional capabilities for visually adapting to or differentiating from the coloration and texture of their surroundings, for the purpose of concealment, communication, predation, and reproduction. Longstanding interest in and emerging understanding of the underlying ultrastructure, physiological control, and photonic interactions has recently led to efforts in the construction of artificial systems that have key attributes found in the skins of these organisms. Despite several promising options in active materials for mimicking biological color tuning, existing routes to integrated systems do not include critical capabilities in distributed sensing and actuation. Research described here represents progress in this direction, demonstrated through the construction, experimental study, and computational modeling of materials, device elements, and integration schemes for cephalopod-inspired flexible sheets that can autonomously sense and adapt to the coloration of their surroundings. These systems combine high-performance, multiplexed arrays of actuators and photodetectors in laminated, multilayer configurations on flexible substrates, with overlaid arrangements of pixelated, color-changing elements. The concepts provide realistic routes to thin sheets that can be conformally wrapped onto solid objects to modulate their visual appearance, with potential relevance to consumer, industrial, and military applications.flexible electronics | metachrosis | thermochromic R ecently established understanding of many of the key organ and cellular level mechanisms of cephalopod metachrosis (1-5) creates opportunities for the development of engineered systems that adopt similar principles. Here, critical capabilities in distributed sensing and actuation (6-9) must be coupled with elements that provide tunable coloration, such as the thermochromic systems reported here or alternatives such as cholesteric liquid crystals (10-13), electrokinetic and electrofluidic structures (14, 15), or colloidal crystals (16)(17)(18)(19). Although interactive displays that incorporate distributed sensors for advanced touch interfaces (20-22) might have some relevance, such capabilities have not been explored in flexible systems or in designs that enable adaptive camouflage. The results reported here show that advances in heterogeneous integration and high-performance flexible/stretchable electronics provide a solution to these critical subsystems when exploited in thin multilayer, multifunctional assemblies. The findings encompass a complete set of materials, components, and integration schemes that enable adaptive optoelectronic camouflage sheets with designs that capture key features and functional capabilities of the skins of cephalopods. These systems combine semiconductor actuators, switching components, and light sensors with inorganic reflectors and organic color-changing materials in a way that allows autonomous matching to background coloration, through the well-known, separate...

Large-scale, dense arrays of plasmonic nanodisks on low-modulus, high-elongation elastomeric substrates represent a class of tunable optical systems, with reversible ability to shift key optical resonances over a range of nearly 600 nm at near-infrared wavelengths. At the most extreme levels of mechanical deformation (strains >100%), nonlinear buckling processes transform initially planar arrays into three-dimensional configurations, in which the nanodisks rotate out of the plane to form linear arrays with "wavy" geometries. Analytical, finite-element, and finite-difference time-domain models capture not only the physics of these buckling processes, including all of the observed modes, but also the quantitative effects of these deformations on the plasmonic responses. The results have relevance to mechanically tunable optical systems, particularly to soft optical sensors that integrate on or in the human body.

Silicon nanostructure color has achieved unprecedented high printing resolution and larger color gamut than sRGB. The exact color is determined by localized magnetic and electric dipole resonance of nanostructures, which are sensitive to their geometric changes. Usually, the design of specific colors and iterative optimization of geometric parameters are computationally costly, and obtaining millions of different structural colors is challenging. Here, a deep neural network is trained, which can accurately predict the color generated by random silicon nanostructures in the forward modeling process and solve the nonuniqueness problem in the inverse design process that can accurately output the device geometries for at least one million different colors. The key results suggest deep learning is a powerful tool to minimize the computation cost and maximize the design efficiency for nanophotonics, which can guide silicon color manufacturing with high accuracy.

Light‐trapping schemes implemented with ultrathin, 3 μm thick silicon solar cells offer excellent opportunities for greatly enhanced absorption and corresponding improvements in efficiency of operation. Optically optimized cells of this type yield energy conversion efficiencies that are higher by ≈190% compared to otherwise identical cells that do not exploit light‐trapping features, consistent with optical modeling results.

Recently, reflectionless or low‐reflection surfaces made of subwavelength structures have been of broad interest in practical engineering. Here, a single‐layer terahertz metasurface is proposed to produce ultralow reflections across a broad‐frequency spectrum and wide incidence angles by controlling the reflection phases of subwavelength structures. To enable full control of the phase range in a continuous band, a combination of two different subwavelength elements are employed, both of which exhibit weak interactions with the incident terahertz waves, thereby showing high local reflectivities near the operating frequency. An optimization method is utilized to determine the array pattern with the minimum overall reflections under the illumination of plane waves. Both numerical simulations and experimental results demonstrate ultralow reflections of terahertz waves by the metasurface over a broad frequency band and wide incidence angles. By using the proposed metasurface, the far‐field scattering patterns of metallic objects can be efficiently controlled, which opens up a new route for low‐reflection surface designs in the terahertz spectrum.

We report advances in materials, designs, and fabrication schemes for large-area negative index metamaterials (NIMs) in multilayer "fishnet" layouts that offer negative index behavior at wavelengths into the visible regime. A simple nanoimprinting scheme capable of implementation using standard, widely available tools followed by a subtractive, physical liftoff step provides an enabling route for the fabrication. Computational analysis of reflection and transmission measurements suggests that the resulting structures offer negative index of refraction that spans both the visible wavelength range (529-720 nm) and the telecommunication band (1.35-1.6 μm). The data reveal that these large (>75 cm(2)) imprinted NIMs have predictable behaviors, good spatial uniformity in properties, and figures of merit as high as 4.3 in the visible range.