PDMS tagged posts

Engineers have developed a new material that mimics human cartilage — the body’s shock absorbing and lubrication system, and it could herald the development of a new generation of lightweight bearings.

Cartilage is a soft fibrous tissue found around joints which provides protection from the compressive loading generated by walking, running or lifting. It also provides a protective, lubricating layer allowing bones to pass over one another in a frictionless way. For years, scientists have been trying to create a synthetic material with the properties of cartilage.

To date, they have had mixed results.

But in a paper published in the journal Applied Polymer Mate...

A type of beetle capable of regulating its body temperature in some of the hottest places on Earth is the centerpiece of new research with major potential implications for cooling everything from buildings to electronic devices in an environmentally friendly manner.

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, with teams from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, have discovered new information about a species of longicorn beetle that can cool its body enough to survive in volcanic areas in Southeast Asia...

Researchers from the University of Houston have reported a breakthrough in stretchable electronics that can serve as an artificial skin, allowing a robotic hand to sense the difference between hot and cold.
Credit: University of Houston

UH researchers discover new form of stretchable electronics, sensors and skins, allowing a robotic hand to sense the difference between hot and cold, while also offering advantages for a wide range of biomedical devices. The work, reported in the journal Science Advances, describes a new mechanism for producing stretchable electronics, a process that relies upon readily available materials and could be scaled up for commercial production.

Cunjiang Yu, Bill D...

Dynamically tunable multispot optofluidic waveguide.

Novel technology combines high-performance microfluidics for sample processing with dynamic optical tuning and switching, all on a low-cost “chip” made of a flexible silicone material. In previous devices from Schmidt’s lab, optical functions were built into silicon chips using the same fabrication technology used to make computer chips. The new device is made entirely of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a soft, flexible material used in microfluidics as well as in products such as contact lenses and medical devices.

“We can use this fabrication method now to build an all-in-one device that allows us to do biological sample processing and optical detection on one chip,” said Schmidt, the Kapany Professor of Optoelectronics and director of th...