The thermal 'Buddha Board'-application of microstructured polyolefin films for variable thermal infrared transparency materials.

In this study, we explore the innovative application of biological principles of scattering foams and structural colouration of white materials to manipulate the transmission properties of thermal infrared (IR) radiation, particularly within the 8-14 µm wavelength range in polyolefin materials. Inspired by the complex skin of organisms such as chameleons, which can dynamically change colour through structural alterations, as well as more mundane technologies such as Buddha Boards and magic water colouring books, we are developing methods to control thermal IR transmission using common thermoplastic materials that are semi-transparent to thermal IR radiation. Polyethylene and polypropylene, known for their versatility and cost-effectiveness, can be engineered into microstructured sheets with feature sizes spanning from 5 to 100 µm. By integrating these precisely moulded microstructures with index-matching fluids, specifically IR transparent oils, we achieve a reversible modification of the thermal transmission properties. This novel approach not only mimics the adaptive functionality of natural systems but also offers a practical and scalable solution for dynamic thermal management. Our results indicate a promising pathway for the development of new materials that can adapt their IR properties in real time, paving the way for smarter thermal management solutions via radiative emission/absorption.

Towards High Efficiency and Rapid Production of Room-Temperature Liquid Metal Wires Compatible with Electronic Prototyping Connectors.

We present in this work new methodologies to produce, refine, and interconnect room-temperature liquid-metal-core thermoplastic elastomer wires that have extreme extendibility (>500%), low production time and cost at scale, and may be integrated into commonly used electrical prototyping connectors like a Japan Solderless Terminal (JST) or Dupont connectors. Rather than focus on the development of a specific device, the aim of this work is to demonstrate strategies and processes necessary to achieve scalable production of liquid-metal-enabled electronics and address several key challenges that have been present in liquid metal systems, including leak-free operation, minimal gallium corrosion of other electrode materials, low liquid metal consumption, and high production rates. The ultimate goal is to create liquid-metal-enabled rapid prototyping technologies, similar to what can be achieved with Arduino projects, where modification and switching of components can be performed in seconds, which enables faster iterations of designs. Our process is focused primarily on fibre-based liquid metal wires contained within thermoplastic elastomers. These fibre form factors can easily be integrated with wearable sensors and actuators as they can be sewn or woven into fabrics, or cast within soft robotic components.

A Review of Electrically Driven Soft Actuators for Soft Robotics.

In recent years, the field of soft robotics has gained much attention by virtue of its aptness to work in certain environments unsuitable for traditional rigid robotics. Along with the uprising field of soft robotics is the increased attention to soft actuators which provide soft machines the ability to move, manipulate, and deform actively. This article provides a focused review of various high-performance and novel electrically driven soft actuators due to their fast response, controllability, softness, and compactness. Furthermore, this review aims to act as a reference guide for building electrically driven soft machines. The focus of this paper lies on the actuation principle of each type of actuator, comprehensive performance comparison across different actuators, and up-to-date applications of each actuator. The range of actuators includes electro-static soft actuators, electro-thermal soft actuators, and electrically driven soft pumps.

Smart Textiles for Visible and IR Camouflage Application: State-of-the-Art and Microfabrication Path Forward.

Protective textiles used for military applications must fulfill a variety of functional requirements, including durability, resistance to environmental conditions and ballistic threats, all while being comfortable and lightweight. In addition, these textiles must provide camouflage and concealment under various environmental conditions and, thus, a range of wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. Similar requirements may exist for other applications, for instance hunting. With improvements in infrared sensing technology, the focus of protective textile research and development has shifted solely from providing visible camouflage to providing camouflage in the infrared (IR) region. Smart textiles, which can monitor and react to the textile wearer or environmental stimuli, have been applied to protective textiles to improve camouflage in the IR spectral range. This study presents a review of current smart textile technologies for visible and IR signature control of protective textiles, including coloration techniques, chromic materials, conductive polymers, and phase change materials. We propose novel fabrication technology combinations using various microfabrication techniques (e.g., three-dimensional (3D) printing; microfluidics; machine learning) to improve the visible and IR signature management of protective textiles and discuss possible challenges in terms of compatibility with the different textile performance requirements.

Durability and Recoverability of Soft Lithographically Patterned Hydrogel Molds for the Formation of Phase Separation Membranes.

Hydrogel-facilitated phase separation (HFPS) has recently been applied to make microstructured porous membranes by modified phase separation processes. In HFPS, a soft lithographically patterned hydrogel mold is used as a water content source that initiates the phase separation process in membrane fabrication. However, after each membrane casting, the hydrogel content changes due to the diffusion of organic solvent into the hydrogel from the original membrane solution. The absorption of solvent into the hydrogel mold limits the continuous use of the mold in repeated membrane casts. In this study, we investigated a simple treatment process for hydrogel mold recovery, consisting of warm and cold treatment steps to provide solvent extraction without changing the hydrogel mold integrity. The best recovery result was 96%, which was obtained by placing the hydrogel in a warm water bath (50 °C) for 10 min followed by immersing in a cold bath (23 °C) for 4 min and finally 4 min drying in air. This recovery was attributed to nearly complete solvent extraction without any deformation of the hydrogel structure. The reusability of hydrogel can assist in the development of a continuous membrane fabrication process using HFPS.

Editorial for the Special Issue on Polymer Based MEMS and Microfabrication.

Polymers are becoming increasingly important in MEMS and microfabricated products [...].

Fluorosilicone as an Omnimold for Microreplication.

Soft lithography and replica molding have been an integral part of polymer basic microfabrication for over 20 years. The use of silicone rubber materials as either molds or directly molded parts are well described in the literature and have provided researchers with an easily accessible technique to reproduce complex micro and nanostructures with minimal costs and technical challenges. Yet, for many applications, the use of standard silicones may not necessarily be the best choice, either as a mold material or as a replicated surface. For those instances where a mold is required that is high temperature tolerant, flexible, durable and capable of being used as a mold for multiple materials including silicone rubber, the most commonly used silicone rubber, Sylgard-184, has substantial deficiencies. In this work, we introduce a new material, Fluorosilicone that has not been described in the microfabrication field in detail and determine it is capable of reproducing micro structures via soft lithography techniques and being used as a mold for thermoplastic and thermosetting polymers, including silicone rubbers. Material compatibility, appropriate processing conditions for quality replicas and demonstration of extremely fast production of silicone microstructures are reported.

Slit Tubes for Semisoft Pneumatic Actuators.

This article describes a new principle for designing soft or 'semisoft' pneumatic actuators: SLiT (for SLit-in-Tube) actuators. Inflating an elastomeric balloon, when enclosed by an external shell (a material with higher Young's modulus) containing slits of different directions and lengths, produces a variety of motions, including bending, twisting, contraction, and elongation. The requisite pressure for actuation depends on the length of the slits, and this dependence allows sequential actuation by controlling the applied pressure. Different actuators can also be controlled using external "sliders" that act as reprogrammable "on-off" switches. A pneumatic arm and a walker constructed from SLiT actuators demonstrate their ease of fabrication and the range of motions they can achieve.

Adhesion Circle: A New Approach To Better Characterize Directional Gecko-Inspired Dry Adhesives.

The number of different designs of directional gecko-inspired adhesives has proliferated over the past 15 years, but some basic characterization tools are still nonstandardized, which can make direct comparisons of different adhesives in the literature difficult. By far the most common type of test for directional adhesives, the load-drag-pull (LDP) test is useful but can miss substantial information on the exact behavior of gecko-inspired adhesives in a variety of loading conditions. Other test techniques, including angled approaches and pull-offs, have been employed by a few groups but they are not as widely adopted; peel tests can be employed but require a larger amount of adhesive material to use in the test, which is not always practical given some current manufacturing constraints. Very few tests have looked at the effect of off-main axis loads on the performance of directional adhesives, however, and this quality of performance may be very important in applications where direct control over displacements or angle of pull-off in pitch and yaw of the peeling interface may not be practical or possible. To address this overlooked area of characterization, we introduce a new test concept for anisotropic adhesives, the adhesion circle, and also compare how the radial normal adhesion performance is altered depending on whether the pull-off comes after a displacement drag or when pulled at a constant angle from vertical after a preload. Testing directional adhesive designs made with different geometries shows that unexpected behaviors at pull-off angles not in the direction of the strong-weak axis can sometimes be seen. The complete adhesion circle tests should help better design directional adhesives for scaled up performance, and can be completed with relatively simple hardware that is typically used in most current directional adhesive tests.

Switchable Dry Adhesion with Step-like Micropillars and Controllable Interfacial Contact.

Dry adhesives have attracted much attention because of their repeatable and reversible attachment. Many research groups have made fruitful achievements in fabricating and designing various dry adhesives. However, most of these studies focus on imitating bioinspired geometry to achieve this smart adhesion, neglecting the contact interface control through their peeling motion. Here, we present an alternative design to achieve this switchable adhesion on the basis of controlling contact areas. This unique design includes micropillars array with large overhanging caps and a "step" located at the center line of the cap. When dragging the pillars in the direction of the upper surface of the step, the lower surface is brought into contact, rapidly yielding stronger adhesion (switched-on state). Alternatively, when dragging the pillars in the direction of the lower surface of the step, the contact areas decrease sharply, leading to weak adhesion (switched-off state). Such switchable property under strong adhesion force is exactly what many practical applications need, and the ability to achieve this property by controlling the adhesion area size presented here opens a new way to dry adhesives design.

Strong, reversible underwater adhesion via gecko-inspired hydrophobic fibers.

Strong, reversible underwater adhesion using gecko-inspired surfaces is achievable through the use of a hydrophobic structural material and does not require surface modification or suction cup effects for this adhesion to be effective. Increased surface energy can aid in dry adhesion in an air environment but strongly degrades wet adhesion via reduction of interfacial energy underwater. A direct comparison of structurally identical but chemically different mushroom shaped fibers shows that strong, reversible adhesion, even in a fully wetted, stable state, is feasible underwater if the structural material of the fibers is hydrophobic and the mating surface is not strongly hydrophilic. The exact adhesion strength will be a function of the underwater interfacial energy between surfaces and the specific failure modes of individual fibers. This underwater adhesion has been calculated to be potentially greater than the dry adhesion for specific combinations of hydrophobic surfaces.

Fabrication and characterization of thermoplastic elastomer dry adhesives with high strength and low contamination.

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polyurethane elastomers have commonly been used to manufacture mushroom shaped gecko-inspired dry adhesives with high normal adhesion strength. However, the thermosetting nature of these two materials severely limits the commercial viability of their manufacturing due to long curing times and high material costs. In this work, we introduce poly(styrene-ethylene/butylene-styrene) (SEBS) thermoplastic elastomers as an alternative for the manufacture of mushroom shaped dry adhesives with both directional and nondirectional performance. These materials are attractive for their potential to be less contaminating via oligomer transfer than thermoset elastomers, as well as being more suited to mass manufacturing. Low material transfer properties are attractive for adhesives that could potentially be used in cleanroom environments for microscale assembly and handling in which device contamination is a serious concern. We characterized a thermoplastic elastomer in terms of oligomer transfer using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and found that the SEBS transfers negligible amounts of its own oligomers, during contact with a gold-coated silicon surface, which may be representative of the metallic bond pads found in micro-electro-mechanical systems devices. We also demonstrate the fabrication of mushroom shaped isotropic and anisotropic adhesive fibers with two different SEBS elastomer grades using thermocompression molding and characterize the adhesives in terms of their shear-enhanced normal adhesion strength. The overall adhesion of one of the thermoplastic elastomer adhesives was found to be stronger or comparable to their polyurethane counterparts with identical dimensions.

Anisotropic dry adhesive via cap defects.

We demonstrate how introducing a deliberate defect on the overhanging caps of strongly adhering mushroom shaped dry adhesive fibers can produce directional adhesion behavior. We find that the shape and location of this defect controls both the total adhesion force and the degree of directionality for these bio-inspired adhesives. Linear beam theory is used to demonstrate how the application of a shear load to a fiber in tension can create a small compressive load to an asymmetric crack, thereby delaying adhesion failure and producing directional adhesion, and the theory is confirmed with finite element models and empirical data. Anisotropic adhesives have been fabricated and tested and can demonstrate normal adhesion force up to ~250 kPa with a shear displacement of 15 µm away from the defect and as small as ~5 kPa when sheared the same amount towards the defect.

Controllable interfacial adhesion applied to transfer light and fragile objects by using gecko inspired mushroom-shaped pillar surface.

Gecko-inspired surfaces are smart dry adhesive surfaces that have attracted much attention because of their wide range of potential applications. However, strong frictional force, rather than adhesive force, is frequently targeted in most of research in this area. In this study, the interfacial adhesive and frictional properties of a gecko-inspired mushroom-shaped polyurethane pillar array surface have been systematically characterized to design and control the interfacial adhesion of the surface by considering the nanoscale interfacial adhesion, the microscale structural compliance and deformation, and the macro-scale actuation. Matching the movement of the leg springs and the interfacial adhesive characteristics between the pillar array surfaces and substrates, a three-legged clamp prototype has been designed and fabricated to successfully pick up and release light and fragile objects with a smooth upper surface, such as a silicon wafer. These results provide a new insight into not only the theoretical understanding of the integrating adhesion mechanisms, but also the practical applications of utilizing and controlling the adhesive and frictional forces of gecko-inspired surfaces.