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We report adaptive resolution molecular dynamics simulations of a flexible linear polymer in solution. The solvent, i.e., a liquid of tetrahedral molecules, is represented within a certain radius from the polymer's center of mass with a…
The interactions of ionic liquids (ILs) with organic solutes are of interest to many applications involving the use of ILs as task-specific solvents, such as in sensing devices or catalysis. However, currently little is known about these…
We describe a fluidic actuator design that replaces the sealed chamber of a hydraulic cylinder using a soft actuator to provide compliant linear compression with a large force ($\geq$100 N) at a low operation pressure ($\leq$50 kPa) for a…
Capacitive technology allows building sensors that are small, compact and have high sensitivity. For this reason it has been widely adopted in robotics. In a previous work we presented a compliant skin system based on capacitive technology…
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a promising solution for handling the complexity of fabricating soft robots. However, the AM of hyperelastic materials is still challenging with a limited material range. Within this work, pellet-based 3D…
Wearable distributed tactile devices aim to provide multipoint touch stimuli, but struggle to provide sufficient forces (> 1 N) at frequencies to invoke deep pressure sensation with minimal encumbrance at small scales. This work presents a…
Biosensors are an essential tool for medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring and food safety. Typically, biosensors are designed to detect specific analytes through functionalization with the appropriate capture agents. However, the…
By means of first-principles methods we analyze the optical response of transparent dense sodium as a function of applied pressure. We discover an unusual kind of charge-transfer exciton that proceeds from the interstitial distribution of…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to explore the impact of a non-ionic solvent on the structural and capacitive properties of supercapacitors based on an ionic liquid electrolyte and carbon electrodes. The study is focused on two pure…
We investigate surface plasmons from a solid-state standpoint and highlight their ultra electron density sensitivity. When a surface plasmon is excited on a planar gold film by an evanescent wave from 625 nm incident light, only a minute…
Electroactive polymers (EAP) are smart materials that can be used as actuators, sensors or energy harvesters in many fields. We had previously studied an ionic metal-polymer composites (IPMC), which consists in an ionic polymer film such as…
The DEPFET collaboration develops highly granular, ultra-transparent active pixel detectors for high-performance vertex reconstruction at future collider experiments. The characterization of detector prototypes has proven that the key…
The structure of polyelectrolytes is highly sensitive to small changes in the interactions between its monomers. In particular, interactions mediated by counterions play a significant role, and are affected by both specific molecular…
When polyelectrolyte-neutral block copolymers are mixed in solutions to oppositely charged species (e.g. surfactant micelles, macromolecules, proteins etc), there is the formation of stable supermicellar aggregates combining both…
Bilayer bending based soft actuators are widely utilized in soft robotics for locomotion and object gripping. However, studies on soft actuators based on bilayer doming remain largely unexplored despite the often-observed dome-like shapes…
We investigate the reliability of simulations of polyelectrolyte systems in aqueous environments, simulations that are performed using an efficient multi scale coarse grained polarizable pseudo-particle particle approach, denoted as pppl,…
We present an ultrasensitive technique for probing transient optical changes in atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS$_2$) layers integrated onto silicon nitride (Si$_3$N$_4$) ring resonators. The MoS$_2$ is illuminated by a femtosecond…
This paper presents a vision-based sensing approach for a soft linear actuator, which is equipped with an integrated camera. The proposed vision-based sensing pipeline predicts the three-dimensional position of a point of interest on the…
Interfaces that couple digital information with physical matter enable computation to be expressed through tangible motion and touch, yet typically rely on embedded actuators, rigid mechanisms, or enclosed environments. Consequently,…
Implicit electron-density solvation models based on joint density-functional theory offer a computationally efficient solution to the problem of calculating thermodynamic quantities of solvated systems from firstprinciples quantum…