Stretchable Multimodal Photonic Sensor for Wearable Multiparameter Health Monitoring.

Stretchable sensors that can conformally interface with the skins for wearable and real-time monitoring of skin deformations, temperature, and sweat biomarkers offer critical insights for early disease prediction and diagnosis. Integration of multiple modalities in a single stretchable sensor to simultaneously detect these stimuli would provide a more comprehensive understanding of human physiology, which, however, has yet to be achieved. Here, this work reports, for the first time, a stretchable multimodal photonic sensor capable of simultaneously detecting and discriminating strain deformations, temperature, and sweat pH.

Soft Biomimetic Fiber-Optic Tactile Sensors Capable of Discriminating Temperature and Pressure.

Tactile sensors with high softness and multisensory functions are highly desirable for applications in humanoid robotics, smart prosthetics, and human-machine interfaces. Here, we report a soft biomimetic fiber-optic tactile (SBFT) sensor that offers skin-like tactile sensing abilities to perceive and discriminate temperature and pressure. The SBFT sensor is fabricated by encapsulating a macrobent fiber Bragg grating (FBG) in an elastomeric droplet-shaped structure that results in two optical resonances associated with the FBG and excited whispering gallery modes (WGMs) propagating along the bent region.