Topological entanglement engineering of ionogels enables strain-gated decoupling of toughness and hysteresis for trimodal noncontact perception

Ionogels are promising candidates for next-generation bionic skins. However, simultaneously achieving high fracture toughness and ultralow mechanical hysteresis remains a fundamental challenge. Here, we report a topological entanglement engineering strategy to achieve strain-gated decoupling of this intrinsic trade-off, enabling the development of highly entangled ionogels for advanced multidimensional noncontact sensing. The designed polymer network, featuring an entanglement-enriched polymer network within a lightly crosslinked framework, exhibits robust mechanical behavior governed by distinct deformation-dependent mechanisms. At large strains, progressive disentanglement and frictional chain pull-out provide sustained energy dissipation, leading to high fracture resistance. At low-to-moderate strains, constrained chain dynamics enable rapid elastic recovery with minimal energy loss, resulting in near-zero hysteresis and rate-independent mechanical response. Benefiting from these strain-segregated mechanical characteristics and hierarchical intermolecular interactions, the ionogel supports a trimodal noncontact sensing platform. It enables sensitive capacitive proximity detection, stable resistive response in aqueous environments based on current redistribution, and self-powered spatial mapping through triboelectric output. The ionogel further demonstrates excellent environmental stability, notch-insensitive mechanical behavior, and long-term durability exceeding 10,000 cycles. These results establish a versatile material platform for compliant bionic skins and provide a general framework for designing soft ionic conductors, with broad implications for soft robotics and complex human–machine interfaces.