Tandem Interactive Sensing Display De-Convoluting Dynamic Pressure and Temperature

Despite great advances in stimuli-interactive displays, which can directly visualize pressure, temperature, and humidity, a single interactive display platform capable of quantitatively discriminating the dynamic variation of two stimuli has yet to be developed. Here, a tandem interactive sensing display demonstrates not only direct visualization of both pressure and temperature but also the quantitative de-convolution of these two simultaneously varied stimuli. The tandem display consists of five polymer layers vertically stacked on a transparent substrate: a temperature-responsive ionic polymer, field-induced blue light-emitting unit (1), conductive polymer electrode with a parallel gap, field-induced orange-light-emitting unit (2), and topologically structured pressure-responsive layer. Impedance change of the responsive layers upon dynamic temperature and pressure is monitored simultaneously, providing stimuli-interactive electroluminescence of light-emitting units (1) and (2), respectively, when an alternating current (AC) field is applied between two polymer electrodes. Dynamic and simultaneous variation of temperature, 30–80 °C, and pressure, 0.5–20 kPa, are conveniently mapped in 3D coordinates of light intensity (z-axis) and color (x-y plane), producing a 2D contour surface plot. This provides an efficient and quantitative de-convolution of unknown combinations of temperature and pressure stimuli. Furthermore, arrays of the tandem interactive displays broaden the versatility of dynamic visualization of multiple stimuli.