polydimethylsiloxane tagged posts

Imagine wearing a thin flexible sticker that can turn your hand or finger movement into communication without you having to say a word or tap a touch screen. Researchers have developed a new type of wearable sensor that can accomplish this futuristic feat and could open new possibilities for rehabilitation applications and help those with disabilities to communicate more easily.

The new sensor combines a soft and flexible material called polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS, with an optical component known as a fiber Bragg grating (FBG)...

Over the past decades, electronics engineers and material scientists worldwide have been investigating the potential of various materials for fabricating transistors, devices that amplify or switch electrical signals in electronic devices. Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors have been known to be particularly promising materials for fabricating the new electronic devices.

Despite their advantages, the use of these materials in electronics greatly depends on their integration with high-quality dielectrics, insulating materials or materials that are poor conductors of electrical current. These materials, however, can be difficult to deposit on 2D semiconductor substrates.

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the Beijing Acade...

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...

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...