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Abstract Flexible sensors have been widely studied for use in motion monitoring, human‒machine interactions (HMIs), personalized medicine, and soft intelligent robots. However, their practical application is limited by their low output performance, narrow measuring range, and unidirectional force detection. Here, to achieve flexibility and high performance simultaneously, we developed a flexible wide-range multidimensional force sensor (FWMFS) similar to bones embedded in muscle structures. The adjustable magnetic field endows the FWMFS with multidimensional perception for detecting forces in different directions. The multilayer stacked coils significantly improved the output from the μV to the mV level while ensuring FWMFS miniaturization. The optimized FWMFS exhibited a high voltage sensitivity of 0.227 mV/N (0.5–8.4 N) and 0.047 mV/N (8.4–60 N) in response to normal forces ranging from 0.5 N to 60 N and could detect lateral forces ranging from 0.2–1.1 N and voltage sensitivities of 1.039 mV/N (0.2–0.5 N) and 0.194 mV/N (0.5–1.1 N). In terms of normal force measurements, the FWMFS can monitor finger pressure and sliding trajectories in response to finger taps, as well as measure plantar pressure for assessing human movement. The plantar pressure signals of five human movements collected by the FWMFS were analyzed using the k-nearest neighbors classification algorithm, which achieved a recognition accuracy of 92%. Additionally, an artificial intelligence biometric authentication system is being developed that classifies and recognizes user passwords. Based on the lateral force measurement ability of the FWMFS, the direction of ball movement can be distinguished, and communication systems such as Morse Code can be expanded. This research has significant potential in intelligent sensing and personalized spatial recognition. more...

During the study of multimodal brain tumor MR image segmentation, the large differences in the image distributions make the assumption that the conditional probabilities are similar when the edge distributions of the target and source domains are similar, and that the edge distributions are similar when the conditional probabilities are similar, not valid. In addition, the training network is usually trained on single domain data, which creates a tendency for the network to represent the image towards the source domain when the target domain is not labeled. Based on the aforementioned reasons, a new multimodal brain tumor MR segmentation strategy based on domain adaptation is proposed in this study. First, the source domain targets for each modality are derived through the clustering methods in the pre-training stage to select the target domain images with the strongest complementarity in the source domain and further produce the pseudo labels. Second, feature adapters are proposed to improve the feature alignment, and a network sensitive to both source and target domain images is designed to comprehensively leverage the multimodal image information. These measures mitigate the domain shift problem and improve the generalization ability of the model, enhancing the accuracy of multimodal brain tumor MR image segmentation. more...

As a cutting-edge technology, animal robots based on living organisms are being extensively studied, with potential for diverse applications in the fields of neuroscience, national security, and civil rescue. However, it remains a significant challenge to reliably control the animal robots with the objective of protecting their long-term survival, and this has seriously hindered their practical implementation. To address this issue, this work explored the use of a bio-friendly neurostimulation system that includes integrated stimulation electrodes together with a remote wireless stimulation circuit to control the moving behavior of rat robots. The integrated electrodes were implanted simultaneously in four stimulation sites, including the medial forebrain bundle (MFB) and primary somatosensory cortex, barrel field (S1BF). The control system was able to provide flexibility in adjusting the following four stimulation parameters: waveform, amplitude, frequency, and duration time. The optimized parameters facilitated the successful control of the rat’s locomotion, including forward movement and left and right turns. After training for a few cycles, the rat robots could be guided along a designated route to complete the given mission in a maze. Moreover, it was found that the rat robots could survive for more than 20 days with the control system implanted. These findings will ensure the sustained and reliable operation of the rat robots, laying a robust foundation for advances in animal robot regulation technology. more...

Abnormal motor speed caused by overload, eccentric load and bearing wear is one of the main fault manifestations of heavy-duty motor. On-line monitoring the speed in real time is of great significance for fault early warning and improving motor operating life. In this paper, a self-powered motor speed sensor based on a coaxial integrated triboelectric–electromagnetic hybrid nanogenerator is proposed. A modular magnet coupling is designed to synchronously transfer energy from the motor shaft to nanogenerator with opposite polarity magnet through non-mechanical contact, which is advantageous to reducing the noise interference induced by rigid connection. The nanogenerator structure is mainly composed of the rotator module including magnet and wear-resistant positive friction material of Polyamide-66 and the stator one fitted with carbon steel enhanced copper coil and negative friction material of PTFE. Especially, an innovative rotating lead structure consisting of a set of rolling and sliding metal balls is fabricated for the first time, which provides a unique solution for transmitting triboelectric charge on rotator. Moreover, the carbon steel column inset into coil hole increases the short-circuit current of electromagnetic generator by 35.2%. The electromagnetic current and triboelectric voltage are used to characterize motor speed in our design, and their sensitivity are 0.035 mA/rpm and 1.365 V/rpm in the range of 0-300 rpm, respectively. When they were conjointly analyzed, the linearity of sensor reaches 0.995, which is attractive and greatly enhances the accuracy using sensing signal to judge the abnormal state. Furthermore, maximum output power of the nanogenerator reaches 76.91 mW, which shows that the nanogenerator is Competent for self-powering the sensor and its controlling circuits. The experimentally results indicate that the proposed self-powered sensor provides a novel design concept for the measurement of rotation speed and exhibits immense potential in industrial detection and mechanical failure early warning. more...

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have recently drawn much attention in the field of biomechanical energy harvesting and motion monitoring. However, the electrode stretchability and contact-separation model induced complicated packed structure remain a problem that heavily affects output performance during various human movements and requires to be urgently addressed. Here, a single-electrode piezo-triboelectric hybrid nanogenerator (SEP-TENG) integrated with stretchable liquid-metal metal electrodes is reported, which simultaneously achieves outstanding energy harvesting performance and skin-comfort human motion monitoring. A polarized piezoelectric BaTiO3/silicon rubber (SR) composites film is served as the effective negative tribomaterial, benefiting from the improved dielectric constant and piezoelectric charge transfer, the optimized SEP-TENG generates a high peak power density of 5.7 W/m2 while contacted with human skin. Besides, owing to the ultralow Young's modulus of the SR encapsulation layer and tribo-piezoelectric hybrid layer, the homogeneous integrated multilayer composite serves no break till a 745% elongation, promoting that the SEP-TENG could effectively harvest biomechanical energy and realize stable power supplying for wearable electronics even under large deformation state. Furthermore, the SEP-TENG could comfortably attach to the finger joints and collect bending energy. This work provides a novel design methodology for a single-electrode TENG to realize omnidirectional biomechanical energy harvesting and motion monitoring. more...

Stretchable, skin-conformal, and self-powered wearable pressure sensors have garnered significant attention for use in human joint bending motion monitoring. Here, a piezo-triboelectric pressure sensor (P-TPS) based on triboelectric nanogenerator and piezoelectric nanogenerator is demonstrated. The P-TPS can generate an enhanced electrical output by coupling the dual-mode triboelectrification and piezoelectric effect. The P-TPS shows high sensitivity (voltage = 0.3 V/kPa; current = 4.3 nA/kPa; pressure range = 0–200 kPa), high linearity, and good stability. Furthermore, it demonstrates a wide measurement range (0–800 kPa), table frequency response, and fast response time. Additionally, all components of the P-TPS are fabricated using flexible and stretchable materials, affording satisfactory stretchability and excellent skin conformality. Owing to their ability to self-power, they can be attached to the outside of joints to monitor human joint bending movements in real time. Hence, this study provides a novel method of using a stretchable and skin-conformal piezo-triboelectric nanogenerator with high electrical performance as a self-powered pressure sensor, which offers significant potential in personalized recognition, medical research, and human machine interface. more...

This paper presents an adaptive control scheme via combining with an unknown system dynamics estimator (USDE) for attitude control of quadrotors subject to both parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. The presented controller is designed by effectively merging an adaptive control with an USDE via backstepping, where the extraneous uncertainties are addressed by USDE, and the adaptive law driven by tracking errors accounts for identifying unknown inertial moment constants. The unique characteristic is that a reinforced attitude controlling can be realized benefiting from the separate handling of parametric uncertainties and disturbances via an adaptive updating and a concise disturbance observation, significantly releasing the learning load of USDE and a high gain can be avoided in feedback loops. Meanwhile, Lyapunov analysis demonstrates that all error variables are uniformly ultimately bounded in the closed-loop system. Eventually, simulations substantiate the utility of suggested control strategy. more...

With the existing pressure sensors, it is difficult to achieve the unification of wide pressure response range and high sensitivity. Furthermore, the preparation of pressure sensors with excellent performance for sleep health monitoring has become a research difficulty. In this paper, based on material and microstructure synergistic enhancement mechanism, a hybrid pressure sensor (HPS) integrating triboelectric pressure sensor (TPS) and piezoelectric pressure sensor (PPS) is proposed. For the TPS, a simple, low-cost, and structurally controllable microstructure preparation method is proposed in order to investigate the effect of carbon nano-onions (CNOs) and hierarchical composite microstructures on the electrical properties of CNOs@Ecoflex. The PPS is used to broaden the pressure response range and reduce the pressure detection limit of HPS. It has been experimentally demonstrated that the HPS has a high sensitivity of 2.46 V/104 Pa (50–600 kPa) and a wide response range of up to 1200 kPa. Moreover, the HPS has a low detection limit (10 kPa), a high stability (over 100,000 cycles), and a fast response time. The sleep monitoring system constructed based on HPS shows remarkable performance in breathing state recognition and sleeping posture supervisory control, which will exhibit enormous potential in areas such as sleep health monitoring and potential disease prediction. more...

In the present work, a facile one-step methodology was used to synthesize honeycomb-like BiFeO3/g-C3N4 composites, where the well-dispersed BiFeO3 strongly interacted with the hg-C3N4. The 10BiFeO3/hg-C3N4 could completely degrade RhB under visible light illumination within 60 min. The degradation rate constant was remarkably improved and approximately three times and seven times that of pristine hg-C3N4 and BiFeO3, respectively. This is ascribed to the following factors: (1) the unique honeycomb-like morphology facilitates the diffusion of the reactants and effectively improves the utilization of light energy by multiple reflections of light; (2) the charged dye molecules can be tightly bound to the spontaneous polarized BiFeO3 surface to form the Stern layer; (3) the Z-scheme heterojunction and the ferroelectric synergistically promoted the efficient separation and migration of the photogenerated charges. This method can synchronously tune the micro-nano structure, surface property, and internal field construction for g-C3N4-based photocatalysts, exhibiting outstanding potential in environmental purification. more...

The flexible pressure sensor has attracted much attention due to its wearable and conformal advantage. All the same, enhancing its electrical and structural properties is still a huge challenge. Herein, a flexible integrated pressure sensor (FIPS) composed of a solid silicone rubber matrix, composited with piezoelectric powers of polyacrylonitrile/Polyvinylidene fluoride (PAN/PVDF) and conductive silver-coated glass microspheres is first proposed. Specifically, the mass ratio of the PAN/PVDF and the rubber is up to 4:5 after mechanical mixing. The output voltage of the sensor with composite PAN/PVDF reaches 49 V, which is 2.57 and 3.06 times that with the single components, PAN and PVDF, respectively. In the range from 0 to 800 kPa, its linearity of voltage and current are all close to 0.986. Meanwhile, the sensor retains high voltage and current sensitivities of 42 mV/kPa and 0.174 nA/kPa, respectively. Furthermore, the minimum response time is 43 ms at a frequency range of 1–2.5 Hz in different postures, and the stability is verified over 10,000 cycles. In practical measurements, the designed FIPS showed excellent recognition abilities for various gaits and different bending degrees of fingers. This work provides a novel strategy to improve the flexible pressure sensor, and demonstrates an attractive potential in terms of human health and motion monitoring. more...

In this paper, we designed a triboelectric acceleration sensor with excellent multiple parameters. To more easily detect weak vibrations, the sensor was founded on a multilayer suspension structure. To effectively improve the electrical properties of the sensor, a surface roughening and internal doping friction film, which was refined with a room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber (RTV) and some thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) powder in a certain proportion, was integrated into the structure. It was found that the optimization of the RTV film increases the open circuit voltage and short circuit current of the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) by 223% and 227%, respectively. When the external vibration acceleration is less than 4 m/s2, the sensitivity and linearity are 1.996 V/(m/s2) and 0.999, respectively. Additionally, when it is in the range between 4 m/s2 and 15 m/s2, those are 23.082 V/(m/s2) and 0.975, respectively. Furthermore, the sensor was placed in a simulated truck vibration environment, and its self-powered monitoring ability validated by experiments in real time. The results show that the designed sensor has strong practical value in the field of monitoring mechanical vibration acceleration. more...

In situ measurements of sensing signals in space platforms requires that the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) sensors be located directly at the point to be measured and in contact with the subject to be measured. Traditional radiation-tolerant silicon-based MEMS sensors cannot acquire spatial signals directly. Compared to silicon-based structures, LiNbO3 single crystalline has wide application prospects in the aerospace field owing to its excellent corrosion resistance, low-temperature resistance and radiation resistance. In our work, 4-inch LiNbO3 and LiNbO3/Cr/Au wafers are fabricated to silicon substrate by means of a polyimide bonding method, respectively. The low-temperature bonding process (≤100 °C) is also useful for heterostructure to avoid wafer fragmentation results from a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch. The hydrophilic polyimide surfaces result from the increasing of -OH groups were acquired based on contact angle and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy characterizations. A tight and defect-free bonding interface was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy. More importantly, benefiting from low-temperature tolerance and radiation-hardened properties of polyimide material, the bonding strength of the heterostructure based on oxygen plasma activation achieved 6.582 MPa and 3.339 MPa corresponding to room temperature and ultra-low temperature (≈ −263.15 °C), which meets the bonding strength requirements of aerospace applications. more...

Aluminum oxide (Al2O3) amorphous structure with short-range order and long-range disorder has presented promising applications in optical and optoelectronic devices. In this paper, the Al2O3 films with different thickness were prepared by atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology at 200°C in order to achieve amorphous structure. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive spectrum (EDS) results indicated that the Al2O3 films were amorphous structure and stable O/Al ratio. The surface topography investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) showed that the samples were smooth and crack-free. Spectroscopic ellipsometer (SE) measurements were operated to investigate the effect of thickness on the structure and optical properties of films with Tauc-Lorentz model. It is found that the band gap exhibits a steady value ~2.3 eV by the UV-VIS transmittance method, but the T-L model was ~3.0 eV. The refractive index and extinction coefficient are related to the variation of thickness and the samples surface quality of amorphous network structure in the thin films. The outstanding optoelectronic properties and facile fabrication of Al2O3 films amorphous structure can be extended to other similar oxides, which could display wide applications in various engineering and industrial fields. more...

As a promising functional material, ferroelectric Pb(ZrxTi1−x)O3 (PZT) are widely used in many optical and electronic devices. Remarkably, as the film thickness decreases, the materials’ properties deviate gradually from those of solid materials. In this work, multilayered PZT thin films with different thicknesses are fabricated by Sol-Gel technique. The thickness effect on its microstructure, ferroelectric, and optical properties has been studied. It is found that the surface quality and the crystalline structure vary with the film thickness. Moreover, the increasing film thickness results in a significant increase in remnant polarization, due to the interfacial layer effect. Meanwhile, the dielectric loss and tunability are strongly dependent on thickness. In terms of optical properties, the refractive index of PZT films increase with the increasing thickness, and the photorefractive effect are also influenced by the thickness, which could all be related to the film density and photovoltaic effect. Besides, the band gap decreases as the film thickness increases. This work is significant for the application of PZT thin film in optical and optoelectronic devices. more...

Microstructure is important to the development of energy devices with high performance. In this work, a three-dimensional Si-based metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor has been reported, which is fabricated by microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Area enlargement is achieved by forming deep trenches in a silicon substrate using the deep reactive ion etching method. The results indicate that an area of 2.45 × 103 mm2 can be realized in the deep trench structure with a high aspect ratio of 30:1. Subsequently, a dielectric Al2O3 layer and electrode W/TiN layers are deposited by atomic layer deposition. The obtained capacitor has superior performance, such as a high breakdown voltage (34.1 V), a moderate energy density (≥1.23 mJ/cm2) per unit planar area, a high breakdown electric field (6.1 ± 0.1 MV/cm), a low leakage current (10−7 A/cm2 at 22.5 V), and a low quadratic voltage coefficient of capacitance (VCC) (≤63.1 ppm/V2). In addition, the device’s performance has been theoretically examined. The results show that the high energy supply and small leakage current can be attributed to the Poole–Frenkel emission in the high-field region and the trap-assisted tunneling in the low-field region. The reported capacitor has potential application as a secondary power supply. more...