Solar-Driven Soft Robots.

Stimuli-responsive materials have been lately employed in soft robotics enabling new classes of robots that can emulate biological systems. The untethered operation of soft materials with high power light, magnetic field, and electric field has been previously demonstrated. While electric and magnetic fields can be stimulants for untethered actuation, their rapid decay as a function of distance limits their efficacy for long-range operations.

Inverse Pneumatic Artificial Muscles for Application in Low-Cost Ventilators.

The procurement and maintenance cost of high-end ventilators preclude their stockpiles sufficient for the mass emergency situations. Therefore, there is a significant demand for mechanical ventilators in such situations. Herein, a low-cost, portable, yet high-performance design for a volume-controlled mechanical ventilator is proposed.

Actuation of untethered pneumatic artificial muscles and soft robots using magnetically induced liquid-to-gas phase transitions.

Pneumatic artificial muscles have been widely used in industry because of their simple and relatively high-performance design. The emerging field of soft robotics has also been using pneumatic actuation mechanisms since its formation. However, these actuators/soft robots often require bulky peripheral components to operate.

Polymer Nanocomposite Microactuators for On-Demand Chemical Release via High-Frequency Magnetic Field Excitation.

On-demand delivery of substances has been demonstrated for various applications in the fields of chemistry and biomedical engineering. Single-pulse release profile has been shown previously for micro/nanoparticles in different form factors. However, to obtain a sustained release, a pulsatile release profile is needed.

A New Approach for Microfabrication of Printed Circuit Boards with Ultrafine Traces.

The advances in micro/nanofabrication techniques have enabled miniaturization of printed circuit boards (PCBs) for various applications such as portable devices, smart sensors, and IoTs, to name a few. PCBs provide electrical connectivity between the components as well as mechanical support. Down-scaling of PCBs is crucial for miniaturization of large systems and devices.

Artificial Muscles: Mechanisms, Applications, and Challenges.

The area of artificial muscle is a highly interdisciplinary field of research that has evolved rapidly in the last 30 years. Recent advances in nanomaterial fabrication and characterization, specifically carbon nanotubes and nanowires, have had major contributions in the development of artificial muscles. However, what can artificial muscles really do for humans? This question is considered here by first examining nature's solutions to this design problem and then discussing the structure, actuation mechanism, applications, and limitations of recently developed artificial muscles, including highly oriented semicrystalline polymer fibers; nanocomposite actuators; twisted nanofiber yarns; thermally activated shape-memory alloys; ionic-polymer/metal composites; dielectric-elastomer actuators; conducting polymers; stimuli-responsive gels; piezoelectric, electrostrictive, magnetostrictive, and photostrictive actuators; photoexcited actuators; electrostatic actuators; and pneumatic actuators.

Vertically Aligned Niobium Nanowire Arrays for Fast-Charging Micro-Supercapacitors.

Planar micro-supercapacitors are attractive for system on chip technologies and surface mount devices due to their large areal capacitance and energy/power density compared to the traditional oxide-based capacitors. In the present work, a novel material, niobium nanowires, in form of vertically aligned electrodes for application in high performance planar micro-supercapacitors is introduced. Specific capacitance of up to 1 kF m (100 mF cm ) with peak energy and power density of 2 kJ m (6.

Fast Torsional Artificial Muscles from NiTi Twisted Yarns.

Torsional artificial muscles made of multiwalled carbon nanotube/niobium nanowire yarns have shown remarkable torsional speed and gravimetric torque. The muscle structure consists of a twisted yarn with half of its length infiltrated with a stimuli-responsive guest material such as paraffin wax. The volumetric expansion of the guest material creates the torsional actuation in the yarn.

Computational simulation of UO, ThO and UO-Al pills to estimate (p,fission) Mo yield in the modeled targets irradiated by CYCLONE30 accelerator.

Mo is important for both therapy and imaging purposes. Accelerator and reactor-based procedures are applied to produce it. Newly proton-fission method has been taken in attention by some research centers.

Multidirectional Artificial Muscles from Nylon.

Multidirectional artificial muscles are made from highly oriented nylon filaments. Thanks to the low thermal conductivity of nylon and its anisotropic thermal expansion, bending occurs when a nylon beam is differentially heated. This heat can be generated via a Joule heating mechanism or high power laser pulses.

Neutronic and thermal-hydraulic analysis of fission molybdenum-99 production at Tehran Research Reactor using LEU plate targets.

Efficient and safe production of molybdenum-99 (Mo) radiopharmaceutical at Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) via fission of LEU targets is studied. Neutronic calculations are performed to evaluate produced Mo activity, core neutronic safety parameters and also the power deposition values in target plates during a 7 days irradiation interval. Thermal-hydraulic analysis has been also carried out to obtain thermal behavior of these plates.

High-Performance Supercapacitors from Niobium Nanowire Yarns.

The large-ion-accessible surface area of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene sheets formed as yarns, forests, and films enables miniature high-performance supercapacitors with power densities exceeding those of electrolytics while achieving energy densities equaling those of batteries. Capacitance and energy density can be enhanced by depositing highly pseudocapacitive materials such as conductive polymers on them. Yarns formed from carbon nanotubes are proposed for use in wearable supercapacitors.

Computational investigation of ⁹⁹Mo production yield via proton irradiation of natU and ²³²Th targets.

Accelerators have some advantages such as safety and cheaper operating and decommissioning costs for (99)Mo production. Yield theoretical calculation using computational codes can powerfully estimate usefulness of a proposed nuclear reaction for a routine manufacturing. In this work, Monte Carlo-based code was used to compute (99)Mo yield in (232)Th and (nat)U proton-irradiated targets, as well as maximum applicable beam current.

Artificial muscles from fishing line and sewing thread.

The high cost of powerful, large-stroke, high-stress artificial muscles has combined with performance limitations such as low cycle life, hysteresis, and low efficiency to restrict applications. We demonstrated that inexpensive high-strength polymer fibers used for fishing line and sewing thread can be easily transformed by twist insertion to provide fast, scalable, nonhysteretic, long-life tensile and torsional muscles. Extreme twisting produces coiled muscles that can contract by 49%, lift loads over 100 times heavier than can human muscle of the same length and weight, and generate 5.