title: Adaptive optoelectronic camouflage systems with designs inspired by cephalopod skins.
abstract: Octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and other cephalopods exhibit exceptional capabilities for visually adapting to or differentiating from the coloration and texture of their surroundings, for the purpose of concealment, communication, predation, and reproduction. Long-standing interest in and emerging understanding of the underlying ultrastructure, physiological control, and photonic interactions has recently led to efforts in the construction of artificial systems that have key attributes found in the skins of these organisms. Despite several promising options in active materials for mimicking biological color tuning, existing routes to integrated systems do not include critical capabilities in distributed sensing and actuation. Research described here represents progress in this direction, demonstrated through the construction, experimental study, and computational modeling of materials, device elements, and integration schemes for cephalopod-inspired flexible sheets that can autonomously sense and adapt to the coloration of their surroundings. These systems combine high-performance, multiplexed arrays of actuators and photodetectors in laminated, multilayer configurations on flexible substrates, with overlaid arrangements of pixelated, color-changing elements. The concepts provide realistic routes to thin sheets that can be conformally wrapped onto solid objects to modulate their visual appearance, with potential relevance to consumer, industrial, and military applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204;
authors.forename: Cunjiang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Engineering and Health, and Skin Disease Research Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; The Solid Mechanics Research Center, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China;
authors.forename: Yuhang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801;
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801;
authors.forename: Xian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801;
authors.forename: Viktor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Malyarchuk
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801;
authors.forename: Shuodao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Engineering and Health, and Skin Disease Research Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China;
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801;
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Engineering and Health, and Skin Disease Research Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208;
authors.forename: Yewang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Engineering and Health, and Skin Disease Research Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208;
authors.forename: Yihui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China;
authors.forename: Hangxun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 02543; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912; and.
authors.forename: Roger T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Hanlon
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Engineering and Health, and Skin Disease Research Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208;
authors.forename: Yonggang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Chemistry, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801 jrogers@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Rogers
mesh_terms: D000221:Adaptation, Ocular; D000818:Animals; D049830:Cephalopoda / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D003116:Color; D004581:Electronics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012867:Skin / Q000033:anatomy & histology*
keywords: flexible electronics; metachrosis; thermochromic