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nanostructures

Skin-like sensor flexible enough for prosthetic limbs

Researchers at Stanford are developing new sensors so flexible and pressure-sensitive that they could be used to make touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs, pressure-sensitive badges, and more.

By incorporating a transparent film of carbon nano-springs, the sensor "can register pressure ranging from a firm pinch between your thumb and forefinger to twice the pressure exerted by an elephant standing on one foot," says postdoctoral researcher Darren Lipomi, co-author of a paper published October 23 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. "None of it causes any permanent deformation."

The team built those nano-springs by airbrushing nanotubes (which are in liquid … Read more

Getting a charge out of a beating heart

Scientists have devised a way to use heartbeat and blood flow to generate electricity to charge military equipment, and maybe even your cell phone one day.

Low-frequency vibrations from any source of movement, including a heartbeat, blood flow and even the wind against your clothes, creates mechanical stress, which in turn produces electricity through the cyclical stretching and releasing of specially designed nano thin, zinc oxide wires, according to researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology.

The new nano-scale "flexible charge pump" generator produces alternating current. The greater the strain rate, the more electricity generated.

"Quite simply, this … Read more