Micron?Scale Soft Actuators Fabricated from Multi?Shell Polystyrene Particle?Gold Nanoparticle Nanohybrids

Fully Tunable Silicon Nanowire Arrays Fabricated by Soft Nanoparticle Templating.

We demonstrate a fabrication breakthrough to produce large-area arrays of vertically aligned silicon nanowires (VA-SiNWs) with full tunability of the geometry of the single nanowires and of the whole array, paving the way toward advanced programmable designs of nanowire platforms. At the core of our fabrication route, termed "Soft Nanoparticle Templating", is the conversion of gradually compres...

Key role of entropy in nanoparticle dispersion: polystyrene-nanoparticle/ linear-polystyrene nanocomposites as a model system.

Dilution of contact, hard sphere-like, nanoparticle-nanoparticle interactions upon mixing plays a key role in explaining nanoparticle dispersion in athermal all-polymer nanocomposites, as illustrated for polystyrene-nanoparticle/linear-polystyrene blends as a model system.

Polypyrrole Soft Actuators

Soft Pneumatic Actuators for Rehabilitation

Pneumatic artificial muscles are pneumatic devices with practical and various applications as common actuators. They, as human muscles, work in agonistic-antagonistic way, giving a traction force only when supplied by compressed air. The state of the art of soft pneumatic actuators is here analyzed: different models of pneumatic muscles are considered and evolution lines are presented. Then, th...

Micromachined Thermal Multimorph Actuators Fabricated by Bulk-etched MUMPs Process

Micromachined thermal multimorph actuators for out-of-plane displacements have been designed and fabricated by Multi-Users MEMS Process (MUMPs) with a post-processing bulk etching step. Micromachined actuators have potential applications in micromanipulation and nanoposition such as manipulation of scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tips, nanopositioner for nano-assembly, micro/nanorobots and ...