research

Dear Colleagues:

I thought the following recent paper by Prof. Neff may be of interest to some of you.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.02203

This paper discusses the natural appearance of the  Hencky-logarithmic strain tensor together with the Hencky strain energy, which can be motivated from some purely geometrical (kinematical) arguments based on the geodesic distance on the general linear group of all invertible tensors GL(n).

Silicon devices are ubiquitous in many micro- and nano-scale technological applications, most notably microelectronics and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).  Despite their widespread usage, however, issues related to uncertain mechanical reliability remain a major factor inhibiting the further advancement of device commercialization.  In particular, reliability issues related to the fracture of MEMS components have become increasingly important given continued reductions in critical feature sizes coupled with recent escalations in both MEMS device actuation forces and harsh u

Silver nanowire (Ag NW) based transparent electrodes are inherently unstable to moist and chemically reactive environment. A remarkable stability improvement of the Ag NW network film against oxidizing and sulfurizing environment by local electrodeposition of Ni along Ag NWs is reported. The optical transmittance and electrical resistance of the Ni deposited Ag NW network film can be easily controlled by adjusting the morphology and thickness of the Ni shell layer.

The demand for flexible and wearable electronic devices is increasing due to their facile interaction with human body. Flexible, stretchable and wearable sensors can be easily mounted on clothing or directly attached onto the body. Especially, highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensors are needed for the human motion detection. Here, we report highly flexible, stretchable and sensitive strain sensors based on the nanocomposite of silver nanowire (AgNW) network and PDMS elastomer in the form of the sandwich structure (i.e., AgNW thin film embedded between two layers of PDMS).