Electronic devices capable of perceiving and responding to environmental changes are essential for applications in human–machine interaction, monitoring systems, and robotics. However, most existing devices struggle with the separation of sensing and actuation, resulting in complex integration and limited responsiveness. Here, inspired by the interplay between sensory and muscle cells in sea anemones, we present an intelligent thermoelectric device that seamlessly combines multimodal sensing with autonomous thermal actuation, achieving a closed-loop sensory-motor reflex. The device exhibits excellent temperature sensitivity (0.2 °C) and pressure resolution (0.03 mm), attributable to its three-dimensional (3D) architecture and hierarchical conductive network. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that a dynamic hydrogen-bonding network enhances stress dissipation and interfacial adhesion, ensuring exceptional mechanical stability over 140,000 cycles. Notably, it also features thermal self-adaptation, actively triggering a protection mechanism to avoid high-temperature stimuli via thermoresponsive deformation, with an adjustable actuation threshold. This work advances intelligent electronics with real-time decision-making and environmental interaction.

Electronic skin (e-skin), capable of perceiving various external stimuli, has emerged as a ubiquitous technology in the field of flexible electronics, finding diverse applications in healthcare systems, prosthetics, and soft robotics. Particularly, anisotropic e-skins have garnered extensive research attention due to their unique directional properties. Nevertheless, the continuous interference from diverse stimuli and intricate environments, along with low sensitivity, have hindered the further widespread application of anisotropic e-skin. Here, we present a transparent e-skin exhibiting remarkable anisotropic strain sensing performance, along with exceptional resilience against interference from other stimuli and harsh environments. Benefiting from the synergistic coexistence of aligned silver nanowires wrinkles and cracks, the e-skin achieves outstanding anisotropy showcasing maximum strain gauge factors (GFs) difference of 2825 and 0.69 along two perpendicular directions, exceeding a difference of more than 4000 times. Furthermore, the e-skin displays superior anti-interference capability, evidenced by a resistance change of less than 6% when subjected to high pressure (663 kPa), torsion (540°), or bending (180°), and exhibits negligible performance degradation even after exposure to harsh environments. Finally, our e-skin is successfully applied to undisturbed predicting crack propagation and precise control of dual-mode soft robots, highlighting its immense potential in structural damage warning and intelligent robotics.

In the past two decades, the field of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has flourished and many rational strategies have been reported for the successful construction of SERS substrates. However, it still lacks the mass-production and programmability for practical applications with arbitrary configurations, and it is highly desirable to develop SERS substrates with strong signal enhancement, large-scale surface area, easy fabrication and low cost. Herein, we demonstrate a large-area fabrication (1.5 m × 5 m) of low-cost (18.8 dollars per square meter), highly sensitive, flexible and transparent SERS substrate by a simple solution process. The high sensitivity of SERS substrate using 3, 3'-diethylthiatricarbocyanine iodide (DTTCI) as probe molecules is strongly dependent on the density and diameter of gold nanoparticles (NPs) on the surface of nylon mesh with the best enhancement factor (EF) of 9.17 × 10¹⁰ and the SERS detection limit of DTTCI molecules is as low as 10^-14 M which shows no obvious degradation even after 10, 000 cycles of fatigue test, high temperature (above than 160 ℃) and acid-alkali treatment, indicating their excellent stability for the performance in all climates.

Nanowire devices have attracted considerable attention because of their unique structure and novel properties, and have opened up significant development opportunities. However, not many studies have focused on their stability and durability under practical conditions, which limits the rapid development of real applications. Herein, we systematically investigate three different treatments, polymer coating, inert atmosphere protection, and thickness-induced self-protection, to protect the tellurium nanowire devices from oxidation when exposed to open air. The degree of oxidation was monitored by examining changes in the valence states of tellurium element and in the morphology of the nanowires. After the protective treatments, the tellurium nanowire devices showed improved stability and remained stable even after 800 days of storage. This work highlights the importance of investigating the stability of nanowire devices, especially for their practical applications.