This research presents a preliminary study on finding predictable methods of controlling the self-folding behaviors of weft knit textiles for use in the development of smart textiles and garment devices, such as those with shape memory, auxetic behav...
Self-assembly is usually considered a parallel process while self-folding and origami are usually considered to be serial processes. We believe that these distinctions do not hold in actual experiments. Based upon our experience with 4D printing, we...
Multi-layered hydrogels consisting of bi- or tri-layers with different swelling ratios are designed to soft hydrogel actuators by self-folding. The successful use of multi-layered hydrogels in this application greatly relies on the precise design and...
Exploring the transformation of spatial mechanisms from their unfolded to controlled folding states to meet the requirements of various application scenarios has long been a hot topic in mechanical structure research. Although conventional spatial me...
The flexibility of thermoelectric generators (TEGs) is important for low-contact thermal resistance to curved heat sources. However, approaches that depend on soft materials, which are used in most existing studies, have the problem of low performanc...
A self-folding method that can fold a thick (~10 μm) metal layer with a large curvature (>1 mm−1) and is resistant to repetitive folding deformation is proposed. Given the successful usage of hinged origami/kirigami structures forms in de...
Miniature soft sensors are crucial for the perception of soft robots. Although centimeter-scale sensors have been well developed, very few works addressed millimeter-scale, three-dimensional-shaped soft sensors capable of measuring multi-axis forces....
The hydrogels are widely used in various applications, and their successful uses depend on controlling the mechanical properties. In this study, we present an advanced strategy to develop hydrogel actuator designed to stimulate live cell clusters by...
We present the design, fabrication, and characterization of single and antagonistic SMA microactuators allowing for uni- and bi-directional self-folding of origami-inspired devices, respectively. Test devices consist of two triangular tiles that are...
Four-dimensional printing refers to a process through which a 3D printed object transforms from one structure into another through the influence of an external energy input. Self-folding structures have been extensively studied to advance 3D printing...
The ability to obtain 3D polymeric objects by a 2D-to-3D shape-shifting method is very appealing for polymer integration with different materials, from metals in electronic devices to cells in biological studies. Such functional reshaping can be achi...
This paper presents the design, fabrication and performance of origami-based folding microactuators based on NiTi films showing the one-way shape memory effect. Freestanding NiTi films are micromachined by laser cutting or photolithography to achieve...
In this work, the synthesis and the stimuli-responsive self-assembly behavior of novel double-hydrophilic poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate-co-(oligo ethylene glycol)methacrylate) random copolymers and their chemically modified derivatives are...
Four-dimensional (4D) printing, as a newly evolving technology to formulate drug delivery devices, displays distinctive advantages that can autonomously monitor drug release according to the actual physiological circumstances. In this work, we report...
Traditional open surgery complications are typically due to trauma caused by accessing the procedural site rather than the procedure itself. Minimally invasive surgery allows for fewer complications as microdevices operate through small incisions or...
We briefly review our studies on the folding/unfolding mechanisms of proteins. In biological self-assembly processes such as protein folding, the number of accessible translational configurations of water in the system increases greatly, leading to a...
Herein, a series of ternary amphiphilic amide-containing bottlebrushes were synthesized by photoiniferter (PI-RAFT) polymerization of macromonomers in continuous-flow mode using trithiocarbonate as a chain transfer agent. Visible light-mediated polym...
Digital microfluidics, which relies on the movement of drops, is relatively immune to clogging problems, making it suited for micro-reactor applications. Here, graphene oxide paper of 100 μm thickness, fabricated by blade coating sedimented disper...
Amphiphilic random and diblock thermoresponsive oligo(ethylene glycol)-based (co)polymers were synthesized via photoiniferter polymerization under visible light using trithiocarbonate as a chain transfer agent. The effect of solvent, light intensity...
Lasers can be used to bend 2D metal sheets into complex 3D objects in a process called ‘laser forming.’ Laser forming bends metal sheets by locally heating the sheets to generate plastic strains and is an established metal bending technol...
Time-dependent shape-transferable soft robots are important for various intelligent applications in flexible electronics and bionics. Four-dimensional (4D) shape changes can offer versatile functional advantages during operations to soft robots that...
Metal cations are associated with many biological processes. The effects of these cations on nucleic acids and chromatin were extensively studied in the early stages of nucleic acid and chromatin research. The results revealed that some monovalent an...
Homochirality is an obvious feature of life on Earth. On the other hand, extraterrestrial samples contain largely racemic compounds. The same is true for any common organic synthesis. Therefore, it has been a perplexing puzzle for decades how these r...
Dung beetle leg joints exhibit a remarkable capacity to support substantial loads, which is a capability significantly influenced by their surface microstructure. The exploration of biomimetic designs inspired by the surface microstructure of these j...
With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), electromagnetic devices are increasingly being deployed in dense and resource-limited environments, resulting in severe mutual interference within limited spectral and spatial resources. To...
RNA sociology investigates the behavioral motifs of RNA consortia from the social science perspective. Besides the self-folding of RNAs into single stem loop structures, group building of such stem loops results in a variety of essential agents that...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a diverse group of membrane-active peptides which play a crucial role as mediators of the primary host defense against microbial invasion. Many AMPs are found to be fully or partially disordered in solution and to ac...
We synthesized a new amino acid-fluorescent nucleobase derivative (qAN1-AA) and from it two new fluorescent nucleobase–fluorophore (pyrene) conjugates, whereby only the analogue with the longer and more flexible linker (qAN1-pyr2) self-folded i...
A 5 GS/s 8-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) implemented in 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology has been demonstrated. The proposed ADC is based on two-channel time-interleaved architecture, and each sub-ADC employs a two-stage cascaded folding and...
Climate change has increased the probability of the occurrence of catastrophes like wildfires, floods, and storms across the globe in recent years. Weather conditions continue to grow more extreme, and wildfires are occurring quite frequently and are...
Brain medical image registration is a fundamental premise for the computer-assisted treatment of brain diseases. The brain is one of the most important and complex organs of the human body, and it is very challenging to perform accurate and fast regi...
Recent studies have shown that molecular aggregation structures in precursor solutions of organic photovoltaic (OPV) polymers have substantial influence on polymer film morphology, exciton and charge carrier transport dynamics, and hence, the resulta...
G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) structures are of interest as a means to understand biological signal transduction and as tools for therapeutic discovery. The growing number of GPCR crystal structures demonstrates that the extracellular loops (EL)...
We report a novel self-rolling, conductive, and biocompatible multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-dopamine-polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogel film. The gel can self-fold into a thin tube when it is transferred from a glass slide to an aqueous environme...
In recent years, origami structures have been gradually applied in aerospace, flexible electronics, biomedicine, robotics, and other fields. Origami can be folded from two-dimensional configurations into certain three-dimensional structures without c...
Strain-induced self-folding is a ubiquitous phenomenon in biology, but is rarely seen in brittle geological or synthetic inorganic materials. We here apply this concept for the preparation of three-dimensional free-standing microscrolls of cobalt hyd...
In this study, we report the synthesis of a novel bio-based material from polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) with good shape-memory effect (SME) and rapid recovery. In this PHA-based polyurethane (PHP), telechelic-hydroxylated polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA-diols...
In the present work, density functional theory (DFT) calculations were applied to confirm that the gold carbide previously experimentally synthesized was AuC film. A crucial finding is that these kinds of AuC films are self-folded on the graphite sub...
Gene product 5 (gp5) of bacteriophage T4 is a spike-shaped protein that functions to disrupt the membrane of the target cell during phage infection. Its C-terminal domain is a long and slender β-helix that is formed by three polypeptide chains wrappe...
First believed to be a simple intermediary between the information encoded in deoxyribonucleic acid and that functionally displayed in proteins, ribonucleic acid (RNA) is now known to have many functions through its abundance and intricate, ubiquitou...
The art of folding paper, named “origami”, has transformed from serving religious and cultural purposes to various educational and entertainment purposes in the modern world. Significantly, the fundamental folds and creases in origami, wh...
The structure of certain nonliving tissues determines their self-shaping and self-folding capabilities in response to a stimulus. Predetermined movements are realized according to changes in the environmental conditions due to the generated stresses...
Harmonic-assisted phase amplification was investigated in a 300-µm-thick Nd:GdVO4 laser with coated end mirrors in the self-mixing interference scheme. The key event is the self-induced hybrid skew cosh Gaussian (abbreviated as skew ch-G)-type...
Plant viruses can be genetically modified to generate chimeric virus particles (CVPs) carrying heterologous peptides fused on the surface of coat protein (CP) subunits as vaccine candidates. However, some factors may be especially significant in dete...
Bacterial-based self-healing concrete (BSHC) is a well-known healing technology which has been investigated for a few decades for its excellent crack healing capacity. Nevertheless, considered as costly and time-consuming, the healing performance (HP...
17 August 2020
The survey of microbial diversity in various environments has relied upon the widespread use of well-evaluated amplification primers for taxonomic marker genes (e.g., prokaryotic 16S and fungal ITS). However, it is urgent to develop a fast and accura...
To facilitate the rapid development of van der Waals materials and heterostructures, scanning probe methods capable of nondestructively visualizing atomic lattices and moiré superlattices are highly desirable. Lateral force microscopy (LFM), w...
TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) is a 414-residue long nuclear protein whose deposition into intraneuronal insoluble inclusions has been associated with the onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other diseases. This protein is physiolog...
Velocity correlation spectra (VAS) in binary mixtures of water and glycerol (G/W), obtained by measurements using the modulated gradient spin echo (MGSE) NMR method, were explained by the interactions of water molecules with clusters formed around th...
Efficient intracellular drug delivery and target specificity are often hampered by the presence of biological barriers. Thus, compounds that efficiently cross cell membranes are the key to improving the therapeutic value and on-target specificity of...
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