Bio-Inspired Gating-Controlled Electronic Skin for Ultrafast Liquid Recognition and Precise Droplet Sliding Sensing...

Endowing intelligent robots with the ability to perceive and analyze complex liquid environments is essential for autonomous decision-making. However, conventional liquid-sensing technologies remain constrained by a fundamental trade-off between transient response and recognition accuracy, a limitation stemming from the sluggish kinetics of interfacial charge transfer and complex analytical procedures. Herein, we present a bionic liquid-sensing electronic skin (BLSE) inspired by the gating-controlled signal transduction mechanism of ion channels on the surface of biological sensory cells. By emulating the transient signal transduction of ion channels, BLSE achieves instantaneous reconstruction of electronic pathways triggered by the contact between low-impedance droplets and the high-impedance sensing array. This design enables an ultrafast response and recovery time of 1.8 ms. To ensure stability in complex liquid environments, a superhydrophobic coating with a contact angle of 159° is integrated, minimizing interfacial adhesion to allow instantaneous functional recovery and stable cyclic sensing. By coupling a multi-layer interlaced electrode network with deep learning algorithms for multi-channel feature extraction, BLSE demonstrates a liquid recognition accuracy of 99.58% and the ability to precisely detect droplet sliding. This gating-inspired sensing paradigm offers a versatile strategy for liquid recognition, paving the way for developing intelligent autonomous systems capable of human-like environmental awareness.