flexible electronics tagged posts

Stretchy, bendable electronics could have many uses, such as monitoring patients’ health and keeping tabs on airplanes. Credit: Benjamin Leever, Ph.D.

A new world of flexible, bendable, even stretchable electronics is emerging from research labs to address a wide range of potentially game-changing uses. Over the last few years, a team of chemists and materials scientists has begun exploring military applications in harsh environments for aircraft, explosive devices and even combatants themselves.

“Basically, we are using a hybrid technology that mixes traditional electronics with flexible, high-performance electronics and new 3-D printing technologies,” says Benjamin J. Leever, Ph.D., who is at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base...

It draws its strength from hexagon-shaped scales and connections between them, University of California, SD engineers, have found. Lactoria cornuta “boxfish is small and yet it survives in the ocean where it is surrounded by bigger, aggressive fish, at a depth of 50 to 100 meters,” said Wen Yang,Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “After I touched it, I realized why it can survive — it is so strong but at the same time so flexible.”

The hexagon-shaped scales are called scutes. They are connected by sutures, similar to the connections in a baby’s skull, which grow and fuse together as the baby grows. Most fish have overlapping scales = no weak points, should a bite from a predator land exactly in between scales...

Hierarchical structure of wood fibers and the characteristic of cellulose fibrils. Note the rich interchain hydrogen bonds among neighboring cellulose molecular chains.

Paper made of cellulose fibers is tougher and stronger the smaller the fibers get. For a long time, engineers have sought a material that is both strong (resistant to non-recoverable deformation) and tough (tolerant of damage). “Strength and toughness are often exclusive to each other,” said Teng Li, associate professor of mechanical engineering at UMD. “For example, a stronger material tends to be brittle, like cast iron or diamond.”

The UMD team pursued the development of a strong and tough material by exploring the mechanical properties of cellulose, the most abundant renewable bio-resource on Earth...