New stretchable, self-healing and illuminating electronic material for wearables and soft robots:
Imagine a flexible digital screen that heals itself when it cracks, or a light-emitting robot that locates survivors in dark, dangerous environments or carries out farming and space exploration tasks. A novel material developed by a team of NUS researchers could turn these ideas into reality.
The new stretchable material, when used in light-emitting capacitor devices, enables highly visible illumination at much lower operating voltages, and is also resilient to damage due to its self-healing properties.
This innovation, called the HELIOS (which stands for Healable, Low-field Illuminating Optoelectronic Stretchable) device, was achieved by Assistant Professor Benjamin Tee and his team from the NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology and NUS Materials Science and Engineering.
[...] Unlike existing stretchable light-emitting capacitors, HELIOS enabled devices can turn on at voltages that are four times lower, and achieve illumination that is more than 20 times brighter. It also achieved an illumination of 1460 cd/m2 at 2.5 V/µm, the brightest attained by stretchable light-emitting capacitors to date, and is now comparable to the brightness of mobile phone screens. Due to the low power consumption, HELIOS can achieve a longer operating lifetime, be utilized safely in human-machine interfaces, and be powered wirelessly to improve portability.
The researchers say the material promises durability and efficiency.
Journal Reference
Yu Jun Tan, Hareesh Godaba, Ge Chen, et al. A transparent, self-healing and high- κ dielectric for low-field-emission stretchable optoelectronics, Nature Materials (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-019-0548-4)
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[R]esearchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created soft robots that can seamlessly shift from walking to swimming, for example, or crawling to rolling:
"We were inspired by nature to develop a robot that can perform different tasks and adapt to its environment without adding actuators or complexity," said Dinesh K. Patel, a post-doctoral fellow in the Morphing Matter Lab in the School of Computer Science'sHuman-Computer Interaction Institute. "Our bistable actuator is simple, stable and durable, and lays the foundation for future work on dynamic, reconfigurable soft robotics."
The bistable actuator is made of 3D-printed soft rubber containing shape-memory alloy springs that react to electrical currents by contracting, which causes the actuator to bend. The team used this bistable motion to change the actuator or robot's shape. Once the robot changes shape, it is stable until another electrical charge morphs it back to its previous configuration.
[...] The actuators require only a hundred millisecond of electrical charge to change their shape, and they are durable. The team had a person ride a bicycle over one of the actuators a few times and changed their robots' shapes hundreds of times to demonstrate durability.
In the future, the robots could be used in rescue situations or to interact with sea animals or coral. Using heat-activated springs in the actuators could open up applications in environmental monitoring, haptics, and reconfigurable electronics and communication.
Video of the robot in action.
Related:
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- New Stretchable, Self-Healing and Illuminating Electronic Material for Wearables and Soft Robots
- A Soft Robotic Insect That Survives Being Flattened by a Fly Swatter
- Rubbery Figures: Scientists Create an Entirely Soft Robot
- "Soft Muscled" Robots Could Perform Delicate Tasks
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 02 2020, @07:24PM
While the tech sounds cool, like nano-crystal displays, if it survives, it will be ready for production in 10 to 20 years.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"