Ion–Electron Coupling Transport in Semiconductor Nanotubes for Retinomorphic Vision

A key limitation of current artificial visual systems lies in their single-channel signal transduction, which fundamentally departs from the parallel processing architecture of the biological retinas enabled by rod and cone cells. To bridge this gap, we developed a retinomorphic vision device by ion-electron coupling transport based on carbon nanotube (CNT)/zinc oxide (ZnO) heterostructured nanotubes. Upon optical stimuli, this device generates two distinct ionic and electronic current signals, effectively mimicking the parallel phototransduction pathways in biological vision. This dual-channel property enables efficient machine vision perception, achieving luminance adaptation and color discrimination accuracies of 96.5% and 98.2%, respectively. Furthermore, traffic-light-guided closed-loop navigation of a mobile vehicle in a real scene has verified its application potential in embodied intelligence. This "single device enabled, distinguishable dual-channel readouts" principle opens a new avenue toward artificial vision systems.