Soft and ion-conducting hydrogel artificial tongue for astringency perception.

ABSTRACT: Artificial tongues have been receiving increasing attention for the perception of five basic tastes. However, it is still challenging to fully mimic human tongue-like performance for tastes such as astringency. Mimicking the mechanism of astringency perception on the human tongue, we use a saliva-like chemiresistive ionic hydrogel anchored to a flexible substrate as a soft artificial tongue. When exposed to astringent compounds, hydrophobic aggregates form inside the microporous network and transform it into a micro/nanoporous structure with enhanced ionic conductivity. This unique human tongue-like performance enables tannic acid to be detected over a wide range (0.0005 to 1 wt %) with high sensitivity (0.292 wt %^-1) and fast response time (~10 s). As a proof of concept, our se

SUBMITTER: Yeom J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7274767 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature