Bioinspired Hydrogen-Bond Traps Enabling Ultrasensitive Temperature Sensing

The development of flexible temperature sensors is hindered by the intrinsically low thermal sensitivity of soft ionic conductors, which arises from averaged energy landscapes and competing transport mechanisms. Inspired by the gating mechanism of biological transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channels, we propose a hydrogen-bond trap regulation strategy. By constructing localized hydrogen-bond traps with heterogeneous energy distributions within a deep eutectic solvent (DES) gel network, continuous ion transport is transformed into a confined, thermally activated hopping process. This approach yields an ultrahigh temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) of 178% °C^-1 and a high B value of 7880 K. A miniature flexible probe (Ø1.0 mm × 1.0 mm) demonstrates practical potential in organ temperature monitoring and wireless respiratory tracking. The tailored hydrogen-bond traps also effectively suppress multimodal crosstalk, enabling the fabrication of a decoupled trimodal sensing system that independently resolves proximity, pressure, and temperature signals for human-robot interaction. This work establishes a versatile materials strategy for achieving thermal perception in soft electronics and provides a general platform for tuning ion transport in polymer networks.