The development of various flexible and stretchable materials has attracted interest for promising applications in biomedical engineering and electronics industries. This interest in wearable electronics, stretchable circuits, and flexible displays has created a demand for stable, easily manufactured, and cheap materials. However, the construction of flexible and elastic electronics, on which commercial electronic components can be mounted through simple and cost-effective processing, remains challenging. We have developed a nanocomposite of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer. To achieve uniform distributions of CNTs within the polymer, an optimized dispersion process was developed using isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and methyl-terminated PDMS in combination with ultrasonication. After vaporizing the IPA, various shapes and sizes can be easily created with the nanocomposite, depending on the mold. The material provides high flexibility, elasticity, and electrical conductivity without requiring a sandwich structure. It is also biocompatible and mechanically stable, as demonstrated by cytotoxicity assays and cyclic strain tests (over 10,000 times). We demonstrate the potential for the healthcare field through strain sensor, flexible electric circuits, and biopotential measurements such as EEG, ECG, and EMG. This simple and cost-effective fabrication method for CNT/PDMS composites provides a promising process and material for various applications of wearable electronics.

A fully transparent quantum dot light-emitting diode (QD-LED) was fabricated by incorporating two types (anode and cathode) of graphene-based electrodes, which were controlled in their work functions and sheet resistances. Either gold nanoparticles or silver nanowires were inserted between layers of graphene to control the work function, whereas the sheet resistance was determined by the number of graphene layers. The inserted gold nanoparticles or silver nanowires in graphene films caused a charge transfer and changed the work function to 4.9 and 4.3 eV, respectively, from the original work function (4.5 eV) of pristine graphene. Moreover the sheet resistance values for the anode and cathode electrodes were improved from ∼63,000 to ∼110 Ω/sq and from ∼100,000 to ∼741 Ω/sq as the number of graphene layers increased from 1 to 12 and from 1 to 8, respectively. The main peak wavelength, luminance, current efficiency, and optical transmittance of the fully transparent QD-LED integrated with graphene anode and cathode were 535 nm, ∼358 cd/m2, ∼0.45 cd/A, and 70-80%, respectively. The findings of the study are expected to lay a foundation for the production of high-efficiency, fully transparent, and flexible displays using graphene-based electrodes.

Heterostructured material systems devoid of ferroic components are presumed not to display ordering associated with ferroelectricity. In heterostructures composed of transition metal oxides, however, the disruption introduced by an interface can affect the balance of the competing interactions among electronic spins, charges and orbitals. This has led to the emergence of properties absent in the original building blocks of a heterostructure, including metallicity, magnetism and superconductivity. Here we report the discovery of ferroelectricity in artificial tri-layer superlattices consisting solely of non-ferroelectric ndmno 3 /srmno 3 / Lamno 3 layers. Ferroelectricity was observed below 40 K exhibiting strong tunability by superlattice periodicity. Furthermore, magnetoelectric coupling resulted in 150% magnetic modulation of the polarization. Density functional calculations indicate that broken space inversion symmetry and mixed valency, because of cationic asymmetry and interfacial polar discontinuity, respectively, give rise to the observed behaviour. our results demonstrate the engineering of asymmetric layered structures with emergent ferroelectric and magnetic field tunable functions distinct from that of normal devices, for which the components are typically ferroelectrics.

Advances in information technology have enabled ubiquitous health monitoring at home, which is particularly useful for patients, who have to live alone. We have focused on the automatic and unobtrusive measurement of biomedical signals and activities of patients. We have constructed wireless communication networks in order to transfer data. The networks consist of Bluetooth and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). In this paper, we present the concept of a ubiquitous-Bedroom (u-Bedroom) which is a part of a ubiquitous-House (u-House) and we present our systems for ubiquitous health monitoring.

This paper introduces a new method, bed actigraphy (BACT) for user-friendly sleep-wake monitoring. BACT provides a non-intrusive acquisition of activity data, and in particular does not require that sensors be attached to the subject's body. The system consists of four load-sensing cells supporting the bed, an A/D converter, and a microcontroller with appropriate software. The performance of BACT was compared to that of standard polysomnography (PSG) recordings and wrist-worn actigraphy (ACT). Ten normal volunteers underwent overnight PSG recordings and were examined simultaneously with BACT and ACT. An automatic scoring algorithm scored each 30-s epoch of the BACT recordings for either 'Wake' or 'Sleep.' A sleep specialist manually scored the PSG recordings, and the results were divided into 'Wake' and 'Sleep' categories. The three methods showed a significant correlation when compared with in the contingency test. The mean epoch-by-epoch agreements between the BACT and PSG, ACT and PSG, and BACT and ACT recordings were 95.2, 92.9, and 94.3%, respectively. The mean absolute differences in sleep percentage (SP) between them were 1.8 +/- 0.82, 3.4 +/- 1.45, and 1.9 +/- 1.16 %, respectively. BACT differentiation of the 'Wake' and 'Sleep' stages proved to be sufficiently robust, and its results were comparable to PSG analysis. This finding supports the experimental and clinical value of bed-activity monitoring during sleep.

We report an effective and reliable method to increase the work function of graphene to as high as 5.50 eV by applying a self-assembled monolayer on its surface. The work function of pristine graphene (4.56 eV) was increased by approximately þ0.94 eV following trichlorosilane (HDF-S) self-assembly. This increase in the work function was confirmed by ab initio calculations. HDF-S self-assembled graphene exhibited no significant changes in structural, optical, or electrical characteristics compared with pristine graphene. In addition, we verified that the modified work function of HDF-S self-assembled graphene was not affected by the underlying substrates. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.

Fungal melanin was utilized as a broad-spectrum sunscreen with antioxidant activity.

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