Circuit-free cardiovascular monitoring via skin-interfaced nanophotonics

Abstract

Nanoscale mechano-optical surfaces enable electronics-free strain sensing, attractive for skin-interfaced devices, yet reported implementations require laser/spectrometer interrogation, negating this advantage. Here, we report electrically passive mechanical transduction of arterial pulsation into diffractive colour shifts read by unmodified smartphone cameras, enabled by a dual-function monolithic poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film. Using large-area double-sided nanoimprinting, we achieve a strain-sensitive nanophotonic surface on one face of the film and a bio-inspired 3D structural adhesive on the other. We measure strain-dependent optical response and reproduce it in colour-mixing optical simulations. In uniaxial cyclic loading tests, 2% strain produces a 9% RGB-intensity modulation, stable over 1000 cycles. Further, 3D structuring improves adhesive shear strength by 65% on skin over flat PDMS. Hand-held smartphone recordings in humans ($n=13$) resolve sub-beat hemodynamics in agreement with clinical reference (per-beat waveform $ρ=0.94 \pm 0.03$), exceeding established non-invasive techniques such as active reflectance photoplethysmography (PPG), imaging PPG, and piezoelectric pulse-force sensors in simultaneous recordings. Importantly, mechanical transduction at the elastomer--air interface presents an optical cardiovascular monitoring approach agnostic to dermal-melanin, a known PPG confounder. Together, these advances establish camera-readable mechanochromic elastomers as versatile materials platforms for wearable cardiovascular monitoring, point-of-care diagnostics, and electronics-free human-machine interfaces.