FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS: SELF-POWERED SENSORS & ACTUATORS

Creating Sensors and Actuators with Self-Powered Features

Welcome to Flexible Electronics: Self-Powered Sensors & Actuators Research Homepage!

Our research group is a highly interdisciplinary research team devoted to exploiting interesting characteristics of self-powered materials and structures, including electroactive and conducting soft polymers, by making them into advanced sensors and actuators. We aim to incorporate them with Industry 4.0 technology in performing more complex applications. Some examples of our outcome include AI-assisted self-powering wearable sensors that can perform human body physiological monitoring and wireless-powered soft actuators that offer remote drug delivery accountability.

1. Wireless Powered Soft Actuators

We reports a wirelessly powered ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) soft actuator operated by external radio frequency (RF) magnetic fields for targeted drug delivery. A proof-of-concept release of the drug cisplatin from the fabricated prototype shows the successful decrease of cell viability of HeLa cells with RF turned on. - Published in Lab on a Chip, 2018

The wireless powered feature is extended to control a soft gripper that is made from the same material. The soft gripper successfully gripped the fish egg sample without any damages. - Published in Smart Materials and Structures， 2018.

2. Self-powered Sensors

Piezoionic Effect

The self-powered IPMC sensor was able to distinguish different pressures exerted by throat movements. An optimized SVM model was developed and able to recognize coughing, humming, swallowing, and nodding actions at a high accuracy of 95%. The enhanced intelligence of the IPMC sensor can be further applied to the internet of things (IoT) in a human–machine interaction platform for an improved human lifestyle. - Published in Polymers， 2021.

Triboelectric Effect

A wearable and stretchable self-powered pressure sensor is proposed based on the microfluidic triboelectric principle. The microfluidic platform enables electrification during the solid–liquid interaction, eliminating the need of a larger separation distance for the contact separation mode.The pressure sensor can function as a touch sensor to control light illumination and gaming interaction with a data acquisition unit. - Published in Smart Materials and Structures，2021.

The Research are Funded by:

Google Sites

Report abuse