One-Dimensional Nanostructured Materials And Manufacturing of Deformable Electronics For Healthcare and Soft Robotics

Engineered electronic systems in soft format with their ability to accommodate mechanical deformations are the drivers for emerging wearable health monitors, implantable electronics, AI-augmented bionic prosthetics and intelligent soft robotics. One dimensional (1D) nanostructures of electronic materials are promising material system for fabricating soft electronics due to their unique form factor. Despite significant state-of-the-art advances, the realization of deformable electronics using 1D nanomaterials requires dedicated material system, economic material synthesis and scalable manufacturing techniques. Moreover, engineering techniques that render stretchability to electronic devices comprise structural engineering to accommodate strain which add complexity to the fabrication process and limits the future advancements in the field. This dissertation aims to provide details of fundamental studies that address some of the existing challenges in materials and manufacturing technology, and to validate the advancements through device characterization, mechanical investigations and utilitarian demonstrations. This dissertation is mainly sectioned with four major topics. The first section introduces ultrathin flexible electronics, fabricated from array of uniaxially aligned electrospun metal oxide semiconducting nanofibers. The ultrathin electronics have advantages of conformability to curvilinear biological surfaces, light weight, bending insensitivity to device performance and mechanical imperceptibility to users. The second topic investigates process – structure – performance correlations and develop novel hierarchical nanostructure of metal oxide nanofibers to enhance sensitivity of multimodal low-voltage operated wearable devices. The third topic introduces rubbery nanocomposite electronic materials, which are synthesized using nanofibrillar structure of electronic materials percolated in elastomer matrix, developed for fabrication of intrinsically stretchable electronic devices. Additionally, Direct Ink Extrusion (DIE) based 3D printing is demonstrated to fabricate all-organic deformable e-skin for soft robots with distributed network of intrinsically stretchable sensors. The fourth topic extends the utility of intrinsically stretchable electronics with packaging in multilayered format for designing a biomimicking e-skin for bioinspired hybridized soft robot. The soft multimodal sensors cladded hybrid soft robotic hand demonstrates real-time clinical healthcare applications that pave way for robots assisted nursing care and demonstrates advanced AI-augmented bionic prosthetics. Overall, this dissertation comprises associated challenges and complete set of results corresponding to materials, manufacturing techniques, electronic devices and mechanical investigations to demonstrate the advancements in 1D nanostructures based deformable electronics for wearable electronics and soft robotics.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical Engineering

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Thukral, Anish

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Yu, Cunjiang

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Karim, Alamgir
• Ryou, Jae Hyun
• Liu, Dong
• Chen, Zheng

• Mechanical engineering
• Materials
• Electrical engineering

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/19853

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/19853