Pressures in the intracranial, intraocular, and intravascular spaces are important parameters in assessing patients with a range of conditions, of particular relevance to those recovering from injuries or from surgical procedures. Compared with conventional devices, sensors that disappear by natural processes of bioresorption offer advantages in this context, by eliminating the costs and risks associated with retrieval. A class of bioresorbable pressure sensor that is capable of operational lifetimes as long as several weeks and physical lifetimes as short as several months, as combined metrics that represent improvements over recently reported alternatives, is presented. Key advances include the use of 1) membranes of monocrystalline silicon and blends of natural wax materials to encapsulate the devices across their top surfaces and perimeter edge regions, respectively, 2) mechanical architectures to yield stable operation as the encapsulation materials dissolve and disappear, and 3) additional sensors to detect the onset of penetration of biofluids into the active sensing areas. Studies that involve monitoring of intracranial pressures in rat models over periods of up to 3 weeks demonstrate levels of performance that match those of nonresorbable clinical standards. Many of the concepts reported here have broad applicability to other classes of bioresorbable technologies.

No abstract

A sub-kilogram scale ($500 g) of expanded graphite nanoplatelet (EGnP) with multi-layered graphene sheets were successfully fabricated using a simple mild-oxidation of pristine graphite. In particular, a substantial amount of trapped water molecules in EGnP make it a good ionic conductor, while simultaneously allowing it to serve as an electrolyte with ion transport characteristics. Due to its high electrical and thermal conductivity, micro-patterned EGnP can be used to produce electro-heating elements for line heaters. We found that the surface resistance of EGnP-based films was two orders of magnitude smaller than that of graphene-based thin films. The EGnP-based line heater demonstrated efficient heat propagation with uniform temperature distribution, resulting in an energy savings of up to ca. 37% in comparison to the graphene-based flexible heater. Especially, the steady-state temperature increased as the applied voltage increased and it reached to 172.3 C at a driving voltage of 14 V. In addition, the EGnP-based line heaters under a bending radius of 4 cm had a 25 C higher temperature as compared with heaters under flat conditions. Most of all, screen printing technique provides the facile formation of shape and size, and makes it possible to be used as a cheap and lightweight patch heater for industrial applications.

No abstract

Graphene nanosheets with uniform shape are successfully incorporated into a silicone encapsulant of a light-emitting diode (LED) using a solvent-exchange approach which is a facile and straightforward method. The graphene nanosheets embedded in the silicone encapsulant have a multifunctional role which improves the performance of light-emitting diodes. The presence of graphene gives rise to effective heat dissipation, improvement of protection ability from external stimuli, such as moisture and hazardous gas, and enhancement of mechanical properties such as elastic modulus and fracture toughness. Consequently, the LEDs composed of a graphene-embedded silicone encapsulant exhibit long-term stability without loss of luminous efficiency by addition of relatively small amounts of graphene. This novel strategy offers a feasible candidate for their practical or industrial applications.

Highly dispersible graphene oxide (GO) sheets of uniform submicrometer size were successfully fabricated from pristine graphite using a simple mechanochemical process. The GO flake morphology was transformed into a spherical form, and the density was decreased slightly via the ball-milling process. Ball-milled GO can be used as an electrorheological (ER) material because of its small particle size, low conductivity, and outstanding dispersibility in silicone oil. We found that the 2-h ball-milled GO-based ER fluid had the best ER performance (shear stress of 78.5 Pa and 630% ER efficiency), which was double that of the nonmilled GO-based ER fluid. The response time to form a fibrillar structure along the applied electric field direction and the recovery time to the starting level decreased with increasing ball-milling time. Additionally, the retarded settling velocity of isolated GO sheets and the electrostatic repulsion between oxygen functional groups on the GO sheets combined to improve the antisedimentation property. The ability to control the size of graphene sheets is a great opportunity to advance graphene commercialization in a high-quality, scalable production setting.

The double-shell SiO2/TiO2 hollow nanoparticles (DS HNPs) are successfully fabricated and adopted as dispersing materials for electrorheological (ER) fluids to investigate an influence of shell structure on ER properties. The DS HNPs-based ER fluid exhibits outstanding ER performance which is 4.1-fold higher compared to that of single shell SiO2/TiO2 hollow nanoparticles (SS HNPs)-based ER fluid. The significantly improved ER property of DS HNPs-based ER fluid is ascribed to the enhanced interfacial polarization. In addition, the ER activities of DS HNPs-based ER fluids are examined depending on the particle diameter. The yield stress of DS HNPs-based ER fluids increases up to 302.4 kPa under an electric field of 3 kV mm(-1) by reducing the particle size, which is remarkable performance enough to promise sufficient probability for practical and industrial applications. The enhanced ER performance of the smaller DS HNPs is attributed to the increased surface area of large pores (30-35 nm) within the shells, resulting in a large achievable polarizability determined by dielectric constants. Furthermore, the antisedimentation property is analyzed in order to offer an additional insight into the effect of particle size on the ER fluids.

No abstract