Self-Driven Hybrid Piezomagnetic–Iontronic Mechanoreceptors for Bimodal SA/RA Perception and Tactile Synthesis

초록

Artificial tactile systems increasingly use independent transduction of slow-adapting (SA) signals from static pressure and rapid-adapting (RA) signals from dynamic vibrations, aiming to mimic the human skin's mechanosensory pathways for enhanced perceptual processing. Here, we present a tactile sensing system based on hybrid materials that integrate an Fe3O4-based piezomagnetic elastomer and a poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC)-based iontronic gel in a unified layered architecture, enabling the orthogonal encoding of SA and RA mechanotransduction. The Fe3O4 elastomer exhibits piezomagnetic coupling, yielding a magnetic flux density of ∼1.5 mT and a peak voltage modulation of ∼15 mV at 3.2 N load, while effectively capturing RA signals over a wide bandwidth up to 1 kHz. Concurrently, the iontronic PVC gel is self-driven by the potential of the Fe3O4 elastomer and delivers stable SA signal outputs with a sensitivity of 1.6/0.48 mV N−1 (whereas the RA channel exhibits 11.4/0.75 mV N−1). By combining these decoupled signal modalities, we construct a haptic mapping framework that generates distinctive tactile fingerprints of object surfaces. This multimodal self-driven sensing approach enables accurate classification of material texture, reliable slip detection, and identification of surface anomalies with different groove widths. This work offers a scalable materials strategy for intelligent robotics and human–machine interfaces. © 2026 The Author(s). Small published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.

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