Related papers: Sensing solvents with ultra-sensitive porous poly(…
Vision-based tactile sensors (VBTSs) are a promising technology for robots, providing them with dense signals that can be translated into a multi-faceted understanding of contact. However, existing VBTS tactile surfaces make use of silicone…
The efficiency of nanopore-based polymer sensing devices depends on the fast capture of anionic polyelectrolytes by negatively charged pores. This requires the cancellation of the electrostatic barrier associated with repulsive polymer-pore…
Porous poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs) recently have been actively serving as a multifunctional, interdisciplinary materials platform in quite a few research areas, including separation, catalysis, actuator, sensor, and energy storage, just to…
In this work, we present the first example of the self-assembly of phospholipid monolayers at the interface between air and an ionic solvent. Deep eutectic solvents are a novel class of environmentally friendly non-aqueous room temperature…
Soft matter materials, such as polymers, membranes, proteins, are often electrically charged. This makes them water soluble, which is of great importance in technological application and a prerequisite for biological function. We discuss a…
Soft robots are powerful tools for manipulating delicate objects, yet their adoption is hindered by two gaps: the lack of integrated tactile sensing and sensor signal distortion caused by actuator deformations. This paper addresses these…
Understanding interactions between membranes requires measurements on well-controlled systems close to natural conditions, in which fluctuations play an important role. We have determined, by grazing incidence X-ray scattering, the…
Collocated tactile sensing is a fundamental enabling technology for dexterous manipulation. However, deformable sensors introduce complex dynamics between the robot, grasped object, and environment that must be considered for fine…
This paper introduces a computational composite material comprising layers for actuation, computation and energy storage. Key to its design is inexpensive materials assembled from traditionally available fabrication machines to support the…
Typical bodily and environmental fluids encountered by biological swimmers consist of dissolved macromolecules such as proteins and polymers, often rendering them non Newtonian. To mimic such scenarios, we investigate the motion of swimming…
Recent advancements in soft robots, human-machine interfaces, and wearable electronics have led to an increased demand for high-performance soft tactile sensors. Tomographic tactile sensor based on resistive coupling is a novel contact…
Soft actuators have drawn significant attention from researchers with an inherently compliant design to address the safety issues in physical human-robot interactions. However, they are also vulnerable and pose new challenges in the design,…
Selectively exciting target molecules to high vibrational states is inefficient in the liquid phase, which restricts the use of IR pumping to catalyze ground-state chemical reactions. Here, we demonstrate that this inefficiency can…
A distinctive feature of layered conductors is the presence of low-energy electronic collective modes of the conduction electrons. This affects the dynamic screening properties of the Coulomb interaction in a layered material. We study the…
An advanced system of sensors/actuators should allow the direct feedback of a sensed signal into an actuation, e.g., an action potential propagation through an axon or a special cell activity might be sensed and suppressed by an actuator…
The high flexibility, impermeability and strength of graphene membranes are key properties that can enable the next generation of nanomechanical sensors. However, for capacitive pressure sensors the sensitivity offered by a single suspended…
Efficient detection of harmful organic volatile compounds is a major health and environmental need in industrialized societies. Tailor-made metal-organic frameworks and other coordination polymers are emerging as promising sensing molecular…
Technical challenges in molecule sensing and chemical detection have created an increasing demand for transformative materials with high sensitivity and specificity. Biohybrid nanopores have attracted growing interest as they can ideally…
The alteration of the dielectric membrane properties by membrane engineering techniques such as carbon nanotube (CNT) coating opens the way to novel molecular transport strategies for biosensing purposes. In this article, we predict a…
The experimentally observed swelling and collapse response of weakly charged polymers to the addition of specific salts displays quite convoluted behavior that is not easy to categorize. Here we use a minimalistic implicit solvent /…