A flexible, lightweight and robust salinity sensor that can be attached to aquatic animals for long-term monitoring of their habitat has been developed by a multidisciplinary team at KAUST. The team created a sensor that accurately records salinity even after long-term submersion. The sensor can form the basis of a marine animal monitoring device that…
Stretchable Fiber Used for Energy Harvesting and Strain Sensing
Fiber-based electronics are expected to play a vital role in next-generation wearable electronics. Woven into textiles, they can provide higher durability, comfort, and integrated multi-functionality. A KAIST team has developed a stretchable multi-functional fiber (SMF) that can harvest energy and detect strain, which can be applied to future wearable electronics. With wearable electronics, health and…
Optical Fiber Sensors Protected by ‘Jacket’ Coating
Optical fibers enable the Internet, and they are practically everywhere: underground and beneath the oceans. Fibers can do more than just carry information: they are also fantastic sensors. Hair-thin optical fibers support measurements over hundreds of km, may be embedded in almost any structure, operate in hazardous environments and withstand electro-magnetic interference. Recently a major…
Ingestible Monitoring Pill Swells to Size of Ping Pong Ball
MIT engineers have designed an ingestible, Jell-O-like pill that, upon reaching the stomach, quickly swells to the size of a soft, squishy ping-pong ball big enough to stay in the stomach for an extended period of time. The inflatable pill is embedded with a sensor that continuously tracks the stomach’s temperature for up to 30…
Graphene Sensors Can Hear the Brain Whisper
A newly developed graphene-based implant can record electrical activity in the brain at extremely low frequencies and over large areas, unlocking the wealth of information found below 0.1 Hz. This technology, which will be showcased in the Graphene Pavilionat Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, was developed by Graphene Flagship partners at the Barcelona Microelectronics Institute…
Haptic Sensors Enable Physical Feedback in Robotic Surgery
UCLA engineers have developed a novel sensor that could add a sense of “touch” to robotic surgery. Robert Candler, an associate professor of electrical engineering, helped develop a haptic feedback sensor that, when placed on the tips of surgical instruments, would provide feedback on the various forces exerted on body tissues to better guide surgery.…
Artificial Skin Could Provide Superhuman Perception
A new type of sensor could lead to artificial skin that someday helps burn victims “feel” and safeguards the rest of us, University of Connecticut researchers suggest in a paper published on January 21 in Advanced Materials. Our skin’s ability to perceive pressure, heat, cold and vibration is a critical safety function that most people…
Mass-Producing Detectors for Next-Gen Cosmic Experiments
Chasing clues about the infant universe in relic light known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, scientists are devising more elaborate and ultrasensitive detector arrays to measure the properties of this light with increasing precision. To meet the high demand for these detectors that will drive next-generation CMB experiments, and for similar detectors to…
Wearable Sensor Detects Anxiety, Depression in Young Children
Anxiety and depression are surprisingly common among young children – as many as one in five kids suffer from one of them, starting as early as the preschool years. But it can be hard to detect these conditions, known as “internalizing disorders,” because the symptoms are so inward-facing that parents, teachers and doctors often fail…
Scientists Pinpoint How Plants Sense Temperature
When it gets hot outside, humans and animals have the luxury of seeking shelter in the shade or cool, air-conditioned buildings. But plants are stuck. While not immune to changing climate, plants respond to the rising mercury in different ways. Temperature affects the distribution of plants around the planet. It also affects the flowering time,…
Algae’s ‘Third Eye’ Functions as Light Sensor
Just like land plants, algae use sunlight as an energy source. Many green algae actively move in the water; they can approach the light or move away from it. For this they use special sensors (photoreceptors) with which they perceive light. The decades-long search for these light sensors led to a first success in 2002:…
Wireless, Battery-Free, Biodegradable Blood Flow Sensor Developed
A new device developed by Stanford University researchers could make it easier for doctors to monitor the success of blood vessel surgery. The sensor, detailed in a paper published Jan. 8 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, monitors the flow of blood through an artery. It is biodegradable, battery-free and wireless, so it is compact and doesn’t…
Sensor Unlocks Avenue for Early Cancer Diagnosis
Monash University engineers have unlocked the door to earlier detection of cancer with a world-first study identifying a potential new testing method that could save millions of lives. Researchers found that a sensor using new, more sensitive materials to look for key markers of disease in the body increased detection by up to 10,000 times.…
Delicate Sensor Monitors Heart Cells with Minimal Disruption
For the first time, engineers have demonstrated an electronic device to closely monitor beating heart cells without affecting their behavior. A collaboration between the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Women’s Medical University and RIKEN in Japan produced a functional sample of heart cells with a soft nanomesh sensor in direct contact with the tissue. This device…
MEMS Sensor Chip Containing High-quality Diamond Cantilevers Developed
A NIMS-led research group succeeded in developing a high-quality diamond cantilever with among the highest quality (Q) factor values at room temperature ever achieved. The group also succeeded for the first time in the world in developing a single crystal diamond microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensor chip that can be actuated and sensed by electrical signals.…
Discovery Opens the Door to Better Magnetic Field Sensors
Magnetic field sensors can enhance applications that require efficient electric energy management. Improving magnetic field sensors below the picoTesla range could enable a technique to measure brain activity at room temperature with millisecond resolution — called magnetic encephalography — without superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) technology, which requires cryogenic temperatures to work. A group of…
A New Look at Cell Membranes
Working with a Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist, a team of researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University has gained the clearest view yet of a patch of cell membrane and its components, revealing unexpected structures and opening up new possibilities for pharmaceutical research. Cell membranes are formed largely of a bimolecular sheet, a fraction of the thickness of…
Sensor Package Hitches a Ride aboard Bees
Farmers can already use drones to soar over huge fields and monitor temperature, humidity or crop health. But these machines need so much power to fly that they can’t get very far without needing a charge. Now, engineers at the University of Washington have created a sensing system that is small enough to ride aboard…
Miniscule Sensors Help Detect Cancer
A physicist in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University hopes to improve cancer detection with a new and novel class of nanomaterials. Liviu Movileanu, professor of physics, creates tiny sensors that detect, characterize and analyze protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in blood serum. Information from PPIs could be a boon to the biomedical industry,…
Cellular Energy Sensor Connected to Chronic Kidney Disease
Chronic kidney disease (CKD), an affliction characterized by progressive loss of kidney function, affects millions of people worldwide and is associated with multi-organ damage, cardiovascular disease, and muscle wasting. Just like engines, living cells require energy to run, thus the combined millions of cells forming an organ have huge energy requirements. Although the heart has…
Nanowires Embedded in Sensitive E-skin
An artificial soft skin imbued with flexible electronics could enhance the way robots sense and interact with their surroundings, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) researchers have shown (Advanced Electronic Materials, “Toward programmable materials for wearable electronics: Electrical welding turns sensors into conductors”). The team has discovered how to program electrical conductivity and…
Form-fitting, Nanoscale Sensors Suddenly Make Sense
What if a sensor sensing a thing could be part of the thing itself? Rice University engineers believe they have a two-dimensional solution to do just that. Rice engineers led by materials scientists Pulickel Ajayan and Jun Lou have developed a method to make atom-flat sensors that seamlessly integrate with devices to report on what…
World’s Smallest Wearable Device Tracks UV Exposure
The world’s smallest wearable, battery-free device has been developed by Northwestern Medicine and Northwestern Engineering scientists to measure exposure to light across multiple wavelengths, from the ultra violet (UV) to visible and even infrared parts of the solar spectrum. It can record up to three separate wavelengths of light at one time. The device’s underlying…
Researchers Develop 3D Printed Glucose Biosensors
A 3D‑printed glucose biosensor for use in wearable monitors has been created by Washington State University researchers. The work could lead to improved glucose monitors for millions of people who suffer from diabetes. Led by Arda Gozen and Yuehe Lin, faculty in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, the research has been published in…
Scientists Unveil How Plants Sense Temperature
When it gets hot outside, humans and animals have the luxury of seeking shelter in the shade or cool, air-conditioned buildings. But plants are stuck. While not immune to changing climate, plants respond to the rising mercury in different ways. Temperature affects the distribution of plants around the planet. It also affects the flowering time,…