Superelastic Tellurium Thermoelectric Coatings for Advanced Trimodal Microsensing

Abstract

Abstract Tactile endoscopes can provide physicians with rich sensory information, enabling fast and accurate medical diagnoses. However, existing tactile endoscopy sensors do not consider temperature perception, which is a very important diagnostic indicator in medicine. Here, we report for the first time a tellurium-based superelastic thermoelectric visual-tactile sensor. This platform achieves a breakthrough by combining tellurium thermocouples designed based on crystal structures with viscoelastic silicone encapsulation, enabling simultaneous microscale visual, thermal, and force measurements in a single device. By employing a morphologically optimized tellurium-polymer heterointerface and advanced deep neural network algorithms, we address the inherent trade-off between transparency and responsiveness, achieving artifact-free imaging, real-time thermal mapping, and microstructure force feedback. We conduct clinical endoscopic palpation experiments on live rabbits and successfully achieve tactile diagnosis of inflamed tissue including temperature distribution, especially in cases where visual distinction is difficult, pointing out possible development directions for intelligent endoscopy systems.