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Abstract Optical spectrometers are essential tools for analysing light‒matter interactions, but conventional spectrometers can be complicated and bulky. Recently, efforts have been made to develop miniaturized spectrometers. However, it is challenging to overcome the trade-off between miniaturizing size and retaining performance. Here, we present a complementary metal oxide semiconductor image sensor-based miniature computational spectrometer using a plasmonic nanoparticles-in-cavity microfilter array. Size-controlled silver nanoparticles are directly printed into cavity-length-varying Fabry‒Pérot microcavities, which leverage strong coupling between the localized surface plasmon resonance of the silver nanoparticles and the Fabry‒Pérot microcavity to regulate the transmission spectra and realize large-scale arrayed spectrum-disparate microfilters. Supported by a machine learning-based training process, the miniature computational spectrometer uses artificial intelligence and was demonstrated to measure visible-light spectra at subnanometre resolution. The high scalability of the technological approaches shown here may facilitate the development of high-performance miniature optical spectrometers for extensive applications. 

Biological systems, including proteins, employ water-mediated supramolecular interactions to adopt specific conformations for their functions. However, current solid-state supramolecular materials are typically stiff and fail to capture the dynamic behaviors observed in proteins. Here, we present dynamic crystal-hydrates of aliphatic dipeptides with sequence-isomers of leucine (L) and isoleucine (I). These crystals exhibit shallow conformational energy landscapes, with various reconfigurable crystal nano-architectures accessible through small changes in relative humidity and temperature. Specifically, for LI crystals, as water content changes, the solid-state supramolecular architecture rapidly and reversibly transitions between perpendicular and parallel honeycomb nano-architectures, as well as layered van der Waals structures, leading to significant and distinct variations in mechanical and photophysical properties. Our findings demonstrate the potential of leveraging aliphatic hydrophobic domains inspired by protein architectures to create dynamic solid-state materials with context-adaptive properties.