From wearable electronics to microscopic sensors to telemedicine, new advances like graphene and supercapacitors are already here.
Solar cells that are stretchable, flexible and wearable won the day and the best poster award from a pool of 215 at Research Expo 2016 April 14 at the University of California San Diego. The winning nanoengineering researchers aim to manufacture small, flexible devices that can power watches, LEDs and wearable sensors. The ultimate goal is to design and build much bigger flexible solar cells that could be used as power sources and shelter in natural disasters and other emergencies.
Research Expo is an annual showcase of top graduate research projects for the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. During the poster session, graduate students are judged on the quality of their work and how well they articulate the significance of their research to society. Judges from industry, who often are alumni, pick the winners for each department. A group of faculty judges picks the overall winner from the six department winners.
Wearable heaters are highly desirable for low-temperature environments. However, the fundamental challenge in achieving such devices is to design electric-heating membranes with flexible, breathable, and stretchable properties.
Study: Large-Scale Preparation of Micro–Nanofibrous and Fluffy Propylene-Based Elastomer/ [email protected] Nanoplatelet Membranes with Breathable and Flexible Characteristics for Wearable Stretchy Heaters. Image Credit: s_maria/Shutterstock.com.
A study published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces aimed to achieve an electric heating membrane with a nanofibrous fluffy texture and excellent electric-heating features. Here, an electric heating membrane was fabricated by coating a melt-blown propylene-based elastomer (PBE) with polyurethane (PU) and graphene nanoplatelet films via an easy, cost-effective, and large-scale method involving a coating-compression cyclic process.
Personal computing has gotten smaller and more intimate over the years—from the desktop computer to the laptop, to smartphones and tablets, to smart watches and smart glasses.
But the next generation of wearable computing technology—for health and wellness, social interaction and myriad other applications—will be even closer to the wearer than a watch or glasses: It will be affixed to the skin.
Continue reading “New ‘smart tattoos’ tackle tech challenges of on-skin computing” »
Over the last three decades, the digital world that we access through smartphones and computers has grown so rich and detailed that much of our physical world has a corresponding life in this digital reality. Today, the physical and digital realities are on a steady course to merging, as robots, Augmented Reality (AR) and wearable digital devices enter our physical world, and physical items get their digital twin computer representations in the digital world.
These digital twins can be uniquely identified and protected from manipulation thanks to crypto technologies like blockchains. The trust that these technologies provide is extremely powerful, helping to fight counterfeiting, increase supply chain transparency, and enable the circular economy. However, a weak point is that there is no versatile and generally applicable identifier of physical items that is as trustworthy as a blockchain. This breaks the connection between the physical and digital twins and therefore limits the potential of technical solutions.
In a new paper published in Light: Science & Applications, an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by Professors Jan Lagerwall (physics) and Holger Voos (robotics) from the University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, and Prof. Mathew Schwartz (architecture, construction of the built environment) from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, U.S., propose an innovative solution to this problem where physical items are given unique and unclonable fingerprints realized using cholesteric spherical reflectors, or CSRs for short.
The study is in the early phase but promising.
We use body sprays to get rid of mosquitos most of the time. We can even use herbs such as sage and rosemary to keep them out of our homes. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg scientists have created a novel method of delivering insect repellent (MLU). The results were published in the.
The researchers used “IR3535,” an insect repellent created by MERCK, to create their prototypes.
The wearable robot helps patients who are afraid of needles.
A recent study in Japan has revealed that a hand-held soft robot can improve the experience of patients while undergoing medical treatments, such as injections and other unpleasant therapies or immunizations.
Inspired by vaccinations during Covid
Continue reading “A new robot can help with the fear of injections during medical treatments” »
A collaborative research team co-led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has developed a wearable tactile rendering system, which can mimic the sensation of touch with high spatial resolution and a rapid response rate.
The team demonstrated its application potential in a braille display, adding the sense of touch in the metaverse for functions such as virtual reality shopping and gaming, and potentially facilitating the work of astronauts, deep-sea divers and others who need to wear thick gloves.
A new technology that incorporates flexible fiber sensors into shoes has been developed by the National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM) at Bilkent University and is able to identify a number of health issues, including Parkinson’s disease and gait disorders.
Project manager Mustafa Ordu, who specialized in the production and characterization of fiber cables that can generate electricity for wearable devices, explained that the technology developed at UNAM is loaded with smart sensors that can monitor body movements and determine issues and diseases, with the potential to diagnose many health problems.
Further explaining the cutting-edge technology, he said that it can be woven into body wear or incorporated into footwear since by knitting these cables together like a type of threaded fabric, they can be incorporated into clothing as fibers. “This is what makes our team stand out among the existing laboratories in the world; we make smart sensors with flexible fiber and two-dimensional materials,” said Ordu.
Continue reading “Turkish scientists develop ‘fiber sensor’ shoes for early diagnosis” »
At 200 times stronger than steel, graphene has been hailed as a super material of the future since its discovery in 2004. The ultrathin carbon material is an incredibly strong electrical and thermal conductor, making it a perfect ingredient to enhance semiconductor chips found in many electrical devices.
But while graphene-based research has been fast-tracked, the nanomaterial has hit roadblocks: in particular, manufacturers have not been able to create large, industrially relevant amounts of the material. New research from the laboratory of Nai-Chang Yeh, the Thomas W. Hogan Professor of Physics, is reinvigorating the graphene craze.
Continue reading “Graphene improves circuits in flexible and wearable electronics” »
