Stimuli-Responsive Structural-Color Hydrogel Chemical Sensor Microarray with Separated Functional Structures

Abstract

This paper describes an eye-recognizable stimuli-responsive structural-color hydrogel chemical sensor microarray having independent functional structures. Single unit of this microarrayed sensor is separated into two functional parts: a stimuli-responsive part and a structural-color part, enabling visible color sensing for various types of target molecules. In order to demonstrate our concept, we fabricated ethanol and Ag+ ions responsive microarrayed sensors with l00-µm-scale units and observed their color change in response to these chemical targets. We believe that our sensor could be applied to continuous environmental monitoring such as water quality, and widen the range of materials for stimuli responsive structural color hydrogel sensors.