Temperature is a fundamental physical quantity. With the rapid development of stretchable electronics, transparent stretchable temperature sensors are in critical demand. However, performance retention under strain is a great challenge, and the influence of the electrode on the sensing performance is rarely reported.
A team of material scientists led by Fang Yi from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China recently developed a transparent strain-insensitive stretchable ionic temperature sensor, whose sensing performance is enhanced through an electrode engineering strategy by inserting MXene between two Ag NWs layers. The strain-insensitive sensing performance is mainly ascribed to a crack counteraction mechanism, where the boosting effect of the expanding electrode area as strain enlarges is counteracted by the decline in conductive paths owing to widening cracks. This crack counteraction mechanism is quantitatively verified through theoretical simulation. The sensor is demonstrated for various applications, including smart prosthetic hands, motion tracking, and temperature monitoring of a deforming surface.
The team published their article in Nano Research on May 21, 2026.
“In this paper, we develop a transparent strain-insensitive stretchable ionic temperature sensor, whose sensitivity is enhanced via an electrode engineering strategy through introducing MXene into two layers of Ag NWs. The addition of MXene notably enlarges the adhesion strength of the electrode to the ionogel electrolyte, and suppresses the ion adsorption on the electrode surface, but meanwhile binds neutral ion pairs whose dissociation enhances with increasing temperature, leading to more free ions on the electrode surface as temperature rises. The strain-insensitive sensing performance can be mainly ascribed to a crack counteraction mechanism that the reduced electron paths resulting from the widening cracks offset the promoting effect of the enlarging electrode surface area on the capacitance as the strain increases.” said Fang Yi, senior author of the paper, professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University.
The ionic temperature sensor exhibits high environmental reliability with maintained sensitivity under sweat, various humidity conditions and pressures. The strain-insensitive sensing performance also presents high cyclic stability with the sensitivity nearly unchanged over 1000 cycles of 50% strain.
The research team demonstrated the potential of the ionic temperature sensor for wearable applications. “The ionic temperature sensor can accurately detect the skin temperature despite various motions. We constructed a temperature alarm system based on the sensor, which can protect the prosthetic hand from cold/hot water by automatically triggering alarms. The ionic temperature sensor array can conveniently deliver the temperature distribution from handshaking between a prosthetic hand and a person, track the motion path of an electric warm worm, and monitor the temperature of a deforming doll’s belly during breathing.” Fang Yi said.
The MXene-enhanced performance is applicable to ionic temperature sensors having neutral electrolyte ion pairs that can bond with MXene and have augmented ion dissociation as the temperature elevates. Future studies could further enhance the performance of the ionic temperature sensors in multiple aspects.“For future research, the sensitivity of the ionic temperature sensor can be further enhanced through routes such as exploiting an ionogel with a bigger change in the dielectric constant per unit temperature; the response/recovery time can be further shortened through strategies such as optimizing the ionogel’s polymer network to accelerate the ion movement and creating porous structures to facilitate the heat diffusion; and the adhesion of the sensor to the body or other electronic components can be improved through methods such as surface modification of the PDMS outer layer by plasma and the mixture of adhesive additives into PDMS.”Fang Yi said.
The research team expects this work to inspire the development of novel stretchable sensors and offer fundamental guidance for the strain-insensitive property of stretchable electronics.
Other contributors include Lingyun Cao, Yao Zhou, Juan Wang, Bin Cheng, Zhihong Chen, Jiageng Pan, Jiaxiang Chen, Jiangfeng He, Xiaoxiao Ma, Honglong Li, Guowei Yang from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University; and Zhiwei Zhang from Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems.
This work was supported by the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (2023B1515020114), National Natural Science Foundation of China (52172170), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (24lgqb003), Guangdong University Innovation and Enhancement Program (2024KTSCX003), Science and Technology Projects of Guangzhou (2025A04J4230) and Medicine-Engineering Convergence Seed Fund (2025) at Sun Yat-sen University.
DOI Link:
https://doi.org/10.26599/NR.2026.94908861
About Nano Research
Nano Research is a peer-reviewed, open access, international and interdisciplinary research journal, sponsored by Tsinghua University and the Chinese Chemical Society, published by Tsinghua University Press on the platform SciOpen. It publishes original high-quality research and significant review articles on all aspects of nanoscience and nanotechnology, ranging from basic aspects of the science of nanoscale materials to practical applications of such materials. After 18 years of development, it has become one of the most influential academic journals in the nano field. Nano Research has published more than 1,000 papers every year from 2022, with its cumulative count surpassing 8,000 articles. In 2025 InCites Journal Citation Reports, its 2025 IF is 9.4 (8.3, 5 years), and it continues to be the Q1 area among the four subject classifications. Nano Research Award, established by Nano Research together with TUP and Springer Nature in 2013, and Nano Research Young Innovators (NR45) Awards, established by Nano Research in 2018, have become international academic awards with global influence.
Nano Research
Transparent Strain-insensitive Stretchable Ionic Temperature Sensor with MXene Enhanced Performance
21-May-2026