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'Smart' bandages based on multimodal wearable devices could enable real-time physiological monitoring and active intervention to promote healing of chronic wounds. However, there has been limited development in incorporation of both sensors and stimulators for the current smart bandage technologies. Additionally, while adhesive electrodes are essential for robust signal transduction, detachment of existing adhesive dressings can lead to secondary damage to delicate wound tissues without switchable adhesion. Here we overcome these issues by developing a flexible bioelectronic system consisting of wirelessly powered, closed-loop sensing and stimulation circuits with skin-interfacing hydrogel electrodes capable of on-demand adhesion and detachment. In mice, we demonstrate that our wound care system can continuously monitor skin impedance and temperature and deliver electrical stimulation in response to the wound environment. Across preclinical wound models, the treatment group healed ~25% more rapidly and with ~50% enhancement in dermal remodeling compared with control. Further, we observed activation of proregenerative genes in monocyte and macrophage cell populations, which may enhance tissue regeneration, neovascularization and dermal recovery.

Intrinsically stretchable bioelectronic devices based on soft and conducting organic materials have been regarded as the ideal interface for seamless and biocompatible integration with the human body. However, the grand challenge remains for the conducting polymer to possess both high mechanical ductility and good electrical conduction at cellular level feature sizes. This longstanding material limitation in organic bioelectronics has impeded the full exploitation of its unique benefits. Here, we introduce a new molecular engineering strategy based on rationally designed topological supramolecular networks, which allows effective decoupling of competing effects from multiple molecular building blocks to meet complex requirements. We achieve two orders of magnitude improvement in the conductivity under 100% strain in physiological environment, along with the capability for direct photopatterning down to 2 μm. These unprecedented capabilities allow us to realize previously inaccessible bioelectronic applications including high-resolution monitoring of ‘soft and malleable’ creatures, e.g., octopus, and localized neuromodulation down to single nucleus precision for controlling organ-specific activities through delicate tissues, e.g., brainstem.

Next-generation wearable electronics require enhanced mechanical robustness and device complexity. Besides previously reported softness and stretchability, desired merits for practical use include elasticity, solvent resistance, facile patternability and high charge carrier mobility. Here, we show a molecular design concept that simultaneously achieves all these targeted properties in both polymeric semiconductors and dielectrics, without compromising electrical performance. This is enabled by covalently-embedded in-situ rubber matrix (iRUM) formation through good mixing of iRUM precursors with polymer electronic materials, and finely-controlled composite film morphology built on azide crosslinking chemistry which leverages different reactivities with C–H and C=C bonds. The high covalent crosslinking density results in both superior elasticity and solvent resistance. When applied in stretchable transistors, the iRUM-semiconductor film retained its mobility after stretching to 100% strain, and exhibited record-high mobility retention of 1 cm2 V−1 s−1 after 1000 stretching-releasing cycles at 50% strain. The cycling life was stably extended to 5000 cycles, five times longer than all reported semiconductors. Furthermore, we fabricated elastic transistors via consecutively photo-patterning of the dielectric and semiconducting layers, demonstrating the potential of solution-processed multilayer device manufacturing. The iRUM represents a molecule-level design approach towards robust skin-inspired electronics., Next-generation skin-inspired electronics require enhanced mechanical robustness and device complexity including elasticity, solvent resistance, and facile patternability. Here, the authors show a molecular design concept that simultaneously achieves all these requirements by covalently linking an in-situ formed rubber matrix with polymer electronic materials.

Next-generation light-emitting displays on skin should be soft, stretchable and bright

Shape memory polymers are promising materials in many emerging applications due to their large extensibility and excellent shape recovery. However, practical application of these polymers is limited by their poor energy densities (up to ∼1 MJ/m3). Here, we report an approach to achieve a high energy density, one-way shape memory polymer based on the formation of strain-induced supramolecular nanostructures. As polymer chains align during strain, strong directional dynamic bonds form, creating stable supramolecular nanostructures and trapping stretched chains in a highly elongated state. Upon heating, the dynamic bonds break, and stretched chains contract to their initial disordered state. This mechanism stores large amounts of entropic energy (as high as 19.6 MJ/m3 or 17.9 J/g), almost six times higher than the best previously reported shape memory polymers while maintaining near 100% shape recovery and fixity. The reported phenomenon of strain-induced supramolecular structures offers a new approach toward achieving high energy density shape memory polymers., We report an approach to achieve a high energy density shape memory polymer based on the formation of strain-induced supramolecular nanostructures, which immobilize stretched chains to store entropic energy.

Polymer-bonded explosives (PBXs) are often subjected to different external environmental conditions with various temperature and humidity during long-term storage, transportation, and usage process. The change in temperature and humidity will result in PBXs cracks formation and cause higher risk of explosion evolution when undergoing various stimulus including impact or friction. Herein, a self-healing polymer binder is developed to solve this problem. The fluoropolymer gel binder, a PVDF-co-HFP (copolymer of CH2-CF2 and CF2-CF(CF3))/EMIOTf (1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium trifluoromethanesulfonate)/graphene ternary composite, has high density, high thermal conductivity, excellent interfacial adhesion property, and exhibits self-healing ability at room temperature. Highly filled PBXs composites with 95% of explosive 2, 6-diamino-3, 5-dinitropyrazine-1-oxide (LLM-105) and 5% of ternary composite are fabricated. The as-prepared PBX samples have high denotation parameter (7800 m s−1), low impact sensitivities (11–12 J), and low friction sensitivity (no sparks was observed even at friction energy load of 0.36 N). More importantly, our PBXs have effective crack healing ability within 48 h at room temperature. Therefore, the stability and safety of PBXs are improved through the self-healing polymer binder. Such PBXs can find widespread application in various military and civil fields.

Achieving a desirable combination of solid-like properties and fast self-healing is a great challenge due to slow diffusion dynamics. In this work, we describe a design concept that utilizes weak but abundant coordination bonds to achieve this objective. The designed PDMS polymer, crosslinked by abundant Zn(II)-carboxylate interactions, is very strong and rigid at room temperature. As the coordination equilibrium is sensitive to temperature, the mechanical strength of this polymer rapidly and reversibly changes upon heating or cooling. The soft–rigid switching ability σ, defined as G’max /G’min, can reach 8000 when ΔT = 100 °C. Based on these features, this polymer not only exhibits fast thermal-healing properties, but is also advantageous for various applications such as in orthopedic immobilization, conductive composites/adhesives, and 3D printing., Combining solid-like properties with fast self-healing is a great challenge due to slow diffusion dynamics. Here the authors demonstrate a rigid and healable material by using weak but abundant coordination bonds to crosslink a PDMS polymer.

Dual-functional polymeric system combining shape memory with self-healing properties has attracted increasingly interests of researchers, as both of these properties are intelligent and promising characteristics. Moreover, shape memory polymer that functions at human body temperature (37 &deg, C) are desirable because of their potential applications in biomedical field. Herein, we designed a polymer network with a permanent covalent crosslinking and abundant weak hydrogen bonds. The former introduces elasticity responsible and maintain the permanent shape, and the latter contributes to the temporary shape via network rearrangement. The obtained PDMS-COO-E polymer films exhibit excellent mechanical properties and the capability to efficiently self-heal for 6 h at room temperature. Furthermore, the samples turn from a viscous state into an elastic state at 37 &deg, C. Therefore, this polymer has shape memory effects triggered by body temperature. This unique material will have a wide range of applications in many fields, containing wearable electronics, biomedical devices, and 4D printing.

There is often a trade-off between mechanical properties (modulus and toughness) and dynamic self-healing. Here we report the design and synthesis of a polymer containing thermodynamically stable whilst kinetically labile coordination complex to address this conundrum. The Zn-Hbimcp (Hbimcp = 2,6-bis((imino)methyl)-4-chlorophenol) coordination bond used in this work has a relatively large association constant (2.2 × 1011) but also undergoes fast and reversible intra- and inter-molecular ligand exchange processes. The as-prepared Zn(Hbimcp)2-PDMS polymer is highly stretchable (up to 2400% strain) with a high toughness of 29.3 MJ m−3, and can autonomously self-heal at room temperature. Control experiments showed that the optimal combination of its bond strength and bond dynamics is responsible for the material’s mechanical toughness and self-healing property. This molecular design concept points out a promising direction for the preparation of self-healing polymers with excellent mechanical properties. We further show this type of polymer can be potentially used as energy absorbing material., There is often a trade-off between mechanical properties (modulus and toughness) and dynamic self-healing in materials. Here the authors design and synthesize a polymer containing thermodynamically stable whilst kinetically labile coordination complexes to address this conundrum.

This paper outlines theoretically investigations of the probability density distribution (PDD) of ranging data for the imaging laser radar (ILR) system operating at a wavelength of 905 nm under the fog condition. Based on the physical model of the reflected laser pulses from a standard Lambertian target, a theoretical approximate model of PDD of the ranging data is developed under different fog concentrations, which offer improved precision target ranging and imaging. An experimental test bed for the ILR system is developed and its performance is evaluated using a dedicated indoor atmospheric chamber under homogeneously controlled fog conditions. We show that the measured results are in good agreement with both the accurate and approximate models within a given margin of error of less than 1%.

This paper presents a mechatronic system approach to the improvement of part straightness accuracy in rough cutting of wire electrical discharge machining (wire EDM). The mechatronic system design integrated an active wire feed apparatus and a microcontroller-based wire tension control system into a novel wire transport system for providing a smooth wire transport and a constant wire tension value. The active wire feed apparatus was first devised to reduce the inertial effect of the wire spool on the wire transport system. Then, a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller was used to implement real-time wire tension control of the wire transport system. Compared to a typical wire transport system, steady-state error of wire tension control can be reduced by half using the newly developed system. Through pulse train analysis, the proportion of normal sparks to total sparks defined as normal spark ratio can be used to monitor spark gap condition as well as to be an indication of evaluating machining speed and part straightness accuracy. Experimental results show that part straightness accuracy can be significantly improved from 13 to 4 μm by the newly developed wire transport system along with optimum machining settings.

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), which is the newest video coding standard, has been developed for the efficient compression of ultra high definition videos. One of the important features in HEVC is the adoption of a quad-tree based video coding structure, in which each incoming frame is represented as a set of non-overlapped coding tree blocks (CTB) by variable-block sized prediction and coding process. To do this, each CTB needs to be recursively partitioned into coding unit (CU), predict unit (PU) and transform unit (TU) during the coding process, leading to a huge computational load in the coding of each video frame. This paper proposes to extract visual features in a CTB and uses them to simplify the coding procedure by reducing the depth of quad-tree partition for each CTB in HEVC intra coding mode. A measure for the edge strength in a CTB, which is defined with simple Sobel edge detection, is used to constrain the possible maximum depth of quad-tree partition of the CTB. With the constrained partition depth, the proposed method can reduce a lot of encoding time. Experimental results by HM10.1 show that the average time-savings is about 13.4% under the increase of encoded BD-Rate by only 0.02%, which is a less performance degradation in comparison to other similar methods. All Rights Reserved © 2015 Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Centro de Ciencias Aplicadas y Desarrollo Tecnologico. This is an open access item distributed under the Creative Commons CC License BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Adopting self-healing, robust, and stretchable materials is a promising method to enable next-generation wearable electronic devices, touch screens, and soft robotics. Both elasticity and self-healing are important qualities for substrate materials as they comprise the majority of device components. However, most autonomous self-healing materials reported to date have poor elastic properties, i.e., they possess only modest mechanical strength and recoverability. Here, a substrate material designed is reported based on a combination of dynamic metal-coordinated bonds (β-diketone-europium interaction) and hydrogen bonds together in a multiphase separated network. Importantly, this material is able to undergo self-healing and exhibits excellent elasticity. The polymer network forms a microphase-separated structure and exhibits a high stress at break (≈1.8 MPa) and high fracture strain (≈900%). Additionally, it is observed that the substrate can achieve up to 98% self-healing efficiency after 48 h at 25 °C, without the need of any external stimuli. A stretchable and self-healable dielectric layer is fabricated with a dual-dynamic bonding polymer system and self-healable conductive layers are created using polymer as a matrix for a silver composite. These materials are employed to prepare capacitive sensors to demonstrate a stretchable and self-healable touch pad.