Design of a flexible surface/interlayer for packaging.

Impact resistance and thermal insulation are important factors to be considered in the fields of encapsulation and drug transportation. In this study, a classic circular sleeve structure is designed by integrating the multi-level surface topography of the sleeve and a hollow sandwich in the wall, which effectively improves the energy absorption efficiency and thermal insulation effect. With the increase of the levels of surface structure, the stiffness of the whole structure and the stress on the topmost structure decreases, which is conducive to protecting the structure. In addition, the thermal conduction efficiency can be limited and the heat preservation ability would be improved as the reduction of the contacting area of packages with internal objects is attributed to such specific topography. Moreover, the synergistic effect of the hollow sandwich further enhances the advantages of mechanics and heat insulation. Based on the findings of this study, this novel design has potential applications in fields such as thermal insulation, packaging, and pharmaceuticals.

Electronic whiskers for velocity sensing based on the liquid metal hysteresis effect.

The artificial biomimetic sensory hair as state-of-art electronics has drawn great attention from academic theorists of industrial production given its potential application in soft robotics, environmental exploration and health monitoring. However, it still remains a challenge to develop highly sensitive electronic sensory hair with fast response. In this study, a bio-inspired electronic whisker (e-whisker) with a hollow polymer shell and a liquid metal core was prepared by microinjection for airflow measurement and detection of obstacles. In addition, we illustrated the effect of liquid metal hysteresis on its distribution in microchannels on deformation. The difference in the deformed velocity between the selected fiber and EGaIn would result in a disturbance emerging in the liquid metal channel, which further causes a variation in resistance. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, the integrated fiber e-whisker can be employed to detect tiny airflow and disturbance. The experimental results indicate that the fiber sensor can detect the airflow velocity as low as 0.2 m s-1 within 0.1 s. The e-whisker can accurately monitor rainfall, human motion and object velocity. This work sheds light on the liquid metal viscosity-induced sensing mechanism and offers a novel strategy to fabricate high-performance velocity sensors.

Artificial Intelligence Medical Ultrasound Equipment: Application of Breast Lesions Detection.

Breast cancer ranks first among cancers affecting women's health. Our work aims to realize the intelligence of the medical ultrasound equipment with limited computational capability, which is used for the assistant detection of breast lesions. We embed the high-computational deep learning algorithm into the medical ultrasound equipment with limited computational capability by two techniques: (1) lightweight neural network: considering the limited computational capability of ultrasound equipment, a lightweight neural network is designed, which greatly reduces the amount of calculation. And we use the technique of knowledge distillation to train the low-precision network helped with the high-precision network; (2) asynchronous calculations: consider four frames of ultrasound images as a group; the image of the first frame of each group is used as the input of the network, and the result is respectively fused with the images of the fourth to seventh frames. An amount of computation of 30 GFLO/frame is required for the proposed lightweight neural network, about 1/6 of that of the large high-precision network. After trained from scratch using the knowledge distillation technique, the detection performance of the lightweight neural network (sensitivity = 89.25%, specificity = 96.33%, the average precision [AP] = 0.85) is close to that of the high-precision network (sensitivity = 98.3%, specificity = 88.33%, AP = 0.91). By asynchronous calculation, we achieve real-time automatic detection of 24 fps (frames per second) on the ultrasound equipment. Our work proposes a method to realize the intelligence of the low-computation-power ultrasonic equipment, and successfully achieves the real-time assistant detection of breast lesions. The significance of the study is as follows: (1) The proposed method is of practical significance in assisting doctors to detect breast lesions; (2) our method provides some practical and theoretical support for the development and engineering of intelligent equipment based on artificial intelligence algorithms.

Controllable preparation of an ice cream-shaped hollow sphere array.

Hollow microspheres with high specific surface area are widely used in thermal insulation, drug delivery and sustained release, catalysis and optical absorption. Eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) undergoes phase transformation and oxidation when heated in aqueous solution, which can provide a crystal seed and preferential growth environment for nanomaterials. Therefore, it is very promising to further study the application of liquid metal in functional and structural nanomaterials. In this study, a EGaIn-based ice cream-shaped hollow sphere array with nanostructures was firstly synthesized on the designed hole array model using a hydrothermal process, and then the surface was further modified by fluorination to form a superhydrophobic film. Different sizes of the hollow Eutectic gallium-indium zinc oxide (EGaIn-ZnO) microspheres could be easily achieved by varying the size of the model, hence leading to controllable wettability. Furthermore, hollow microspheres hold much air, making it feasible for application in the field of anti-ice and thermal insulation.

Superhydrophobic E-textile with an Ag-EGaIn Conductive Layer for Motion Detection and Electromagnetic Interference Shielding.

As as emerging innovation, electronic textiles have shown promising potential in health monitoring, energy harvesting, temperature regulation, and human-computer interactions. To access broader application scenarios, numerous e-textiles have been designed with a superhydrophobic surface to steer clear of interference from humidity or chemical decay. Nevertheless, even the cutting-edge electronic textiles (e-textiles) still have difficulty in realizing superior conductivity and satisfactory water repellency simultaneously. Herein, a facile and efficient approach to integrate a hierarchical elastic e-textile is proposed by electroless silver plating on GaIn alloy liquid metal coated textiles. The continuous uneven surface of AgNPs and deposition of FAS-17 endow the textile with exceptional and robust superhydrophobic performance, in which the conductivity and the contact angle of the as-made textile could reach 2145 ± 122 S/cm and 161.5 ± 2.1°, respectively. On the basis of such excellent conductivity, the electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding function is excavated and the average shielding efficiency (SE) reaches about 87.56 dB within frequencies of 8.2-12.4 GHz. Furthermore, due to its high elasticity and low modulus, the textile can serve as a wearable strain sensor for motion detection, health monitoring, and underwater message transmission. This work provides a novel route to fabricate high-performance hydrophobic e-textiles, in which the encapsulation strategy could be referenced for the further development of conductive textiles.