A TRPV1-inspired thermal nociceptive sensing system based on ion-modulated layered semiconductors for nociceptive sensitization.

Thermal nociceptive sensors capable of distinguishing innocuous and noxious thermal stimuli are crucial for self-protective humanoid robotics, adaptive prosthetics and intelligent human-machine interactions. However, most artificial thermal nociceptors lack the threshold-like, nonlinear and ion-mediated required to emulate biological thermal nociception mediated by transient receptor potential vanilloid 1(TRPV1), a key heat-activated ion channel protein in humans. Here, we report a neuromorphic thermal nociceptive sensing system consisting of an ion-regulated thermal sensor (iRTS) and an ion-gated synaptic transistor (iGST) based on layered semiconductors. Through ionic modulation of nonlinear thermally activated charge transport in the layered WSe2/MoS2 heterojunction, the iRTS exhibits a clear turning point at ∼320 K, close to the human noxious-heat perception threshold, beyond which the thermally evoked current increases nonlinearly with a high sensitivity of up to ∼35% K-1, while maintaining an ultrahigh resolution of 0.005 K and an mA-level thermally evoked output current. By integrating the iRTS with the iGST, these thermal nociceptive signals are further converted into post-synaptic outputs that exhibit adaptive threshold modulation and sensitization behaviors, including hyperalgesia and allodynia-key features of biological thermal nociception. In addition, the iGST output is quantitatively mapped to a projected robotic finger-angle response, extending the artificial nociceptive pathway from thermal sensing and synaptic processing to behavior-level output. These results establish a high-performance neuromorphic thermal nociceptive sensor platform and offer a device-level strategy for intelligent robotics and adaptive human-machine interfaces.