Jellyfish Tentacle-Inspired Hydrogel Microfibers Implanted with Discrete Structural Color Microsphere Tactile Sensing Units

Tactile sensors with distinctive ability to imitate skins have attracted considerable attention from researches for applications in a variety of sensing fields. Here, inspired by the tentacles of jellyfish, biomimetic hydrogel microfibers were fabricated to be implanted with discrete structural color microsphere units for spatial tactile sensing. By employing a microfluidic spinning technology, the generated microfibers were with high microsphere encapsulation features and controllable morphologies because of the density match of microspheres and the pre-hydrogel solution. In addition, benefitting from the easy manipulation of the microfluidics, microfibers implanted with different structural color microspheres could also be realized. It was demonstrated that the resultant microfibers would show synchronous shifts of photonic bandgaps as well as structural color when a local force like pressure or tension was applied to the microsphere part. Based on the localization of finger bending experiments, the practical values of the bioinspired microfibers have also been proved as spatial tactile sensors. Thus, it is believed that the proposed bioinspired hydrogel microfibers are greatly significant in diverse sensing application fields.Graphical Abstract