Soft Electronics

Soft material-enabled electronics offer distinct advantage, over conventional rigid and bulky devices, for numerous wearable and implantable applications. Soft materials allow for seamless integration with skin and tissues due to enhanced mechanical flexibility and stretchability. Wearable devices, such as sensors, offer continuous, real-time monitoring of biosignals and movements, which can be applied in rehabilitation and diagnostics, among other applications. Soft implantable electronics offer similar functionalities, but with improved compatibility with human tissues. Biodegradable soft implantable electronics are also being developed for transient monitoring, such as in the weeks following surgery. To further advance soft electronics, materials, integration strategies, and fabrication techniques are being developed. This paper reviews recent progress in these areas, toward the development of soft material-enabled electronics for medicine, healthcare, and human-machine interfaces.

This volume provides practicing engineers with new solutions to demanding real-world problems. It presents applications of soft computing to the field of industrial electronics in two categories, electric power applications and emerging applications.

Soft-Switching Technology for Three-phase Power Electronics Converters Discover foundational and advanced topics in soft-switching technology, including ZVS three-phase conversion In Soft-Switching Technology for Three-phase Power Electronics Converters, an expert team of researchers delivers a comprehensive exploration of soft-switching three-phase converters for applications including renewable energy and distribution power systems, AC power sources, UPS, motor drives, battery chargers, and more. The authors begin with an introduction to the fundamentals of the technology, providing the basic knowledge necessary for readers to understand the following articles. The book goes on to discuss three-phase rectifiers and three-phase grid inverters. It offers prototypes and experiments of each type of technology. Finally, the authors describe the impact of silicon carbide devices on soft-switching three-phase converters, studying the improvement in efficiency and power density created via the introduction of silicon carbide devices. Throughout, the authors put a special focus on a family of zero-voltage switching (ZVS) three-phase converters and related pulse width modulation (PWM) schemes. The book also includes: A thorough introduction to soft-switching techniques, including the classification of soft-switching for three phase converter topologies, soft-switching types and a generic soft-switching pulse-width-modulation known as Edge-Aligned PWM A comprehensive exploration of classical soft-switching three-phase converters, including the switching of power semiconductor devices and DC and AC side resonance Practical discussions of ZVS space vector modulation for three-phase converters, including the three-phase converter commutation process In-depth examinations of three-phase rectifiers with compound active clamping circuits Perfect for researchers, scientists, professional engineers, and undergraduate and graduate students studying or working in power electronics, Soft-Switching Technology for Three-phase Power Electronics Converters is also a must-read resource for research and development engineers involved with the design and development of power electronics.

Untethered Miniature Soft Robots Reference on achieving contactless manipulation of soft robots, detailing high level concepts and perspectives and technical skills of soft robots Untethered Miniature Soft Robots: Materials, Fabrications, and Applications introduces the emerging field of miniature soft robots and summarizes the recent rapid development in the field to date, describing different types of functional materials to build miniature soft robots, such as silicone elastomer, carbon-based materials, hydrogels, liquid crystal polymer, flexible ferrofluid, and liquid metal, and covering the material properties, fabrication strategies, and functionalities in soft robots together with their underlying mechanisms. The book discusses magnetically, thermally, optically, and chemically actuated soft robots in depth, explores the many specific applications of miniature soft robots in biomedical, environmental, and electrical fields and summarizes the development of miniature soft robots based on soft matter, fabrication strategies, locomotion principles, sensing and actuation mechanisms. In closing, the text summarizes the opportunities and challenges faced by miniature soft robots, providing expert insight into the possible futures of this field. Written by four highly qualified academics, Untethered Miniature Soft Robots covers sample topics such as: Soft elastomer-based robots with programmable magnetization profiles and untethered soft robots based on template-aiding Working mechanisms of carbon-based materials, covering light-induced expansion and shrinkage, and humidity-induced deformation Designing microscale building blocks, modular assembly of building blocks based on Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) matrix, and inverse and forward design of modular morphing systems Material designs of magnetic liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) systems, multiple-stimuli responsiveness of magnetic LCE systems, and adaptive locomotion of magnetic LCE-based robots Controllable deformation and motion behaviors, as well as applications of ferrofluids droplet robots (FDRs), including cargo capturing, object sorting, liquid pumping/mixing, and liquid skin. Providing highly detailed and up-to-date coverage of the topic, Untethered Miniature Soft Robots serves as an invaluable and highly comprehensive reference for researchers working in this promising field across a variety of disciplines, including materials scientists, mechanical and electronics engineers, polymer chemists, and biochemists.

This book provides a detailed treatment of radiation effects in electronic devices, including effects at the material, device, and circuit levels. The emphasis is on transient effects caused by single ionizing particles (single-event effects and soft errors) and effects produced by the cumulative energy deposited by the radiation (total ionizing dose effects). Bipolar (Si and SiGe), metalOCooxideOCosemiconductor (MOS), and compound semiconductor technologies are discussed. In addition to considering the specific issues associated with high-performance devices and technologies, the book includes the background material necessary for understanding radiation effects at a more general level. Contents: Single Event Effects in Avionics and on the Ground (E Normand); Soft Errors in Commercial Integrated Circuits (R C Baumann); System Level Single Event Upset Mitigation Strategies (W F Heidergott); Space Radiation Effects in Optocouplers (R A Reed et al.); The Effects of Space Radiation Exposure on Power MOSFETs: A Review (K Shenai et al.); Total Dose Effects in Linear Bipolar Integrated Circuits (H J Barnaby); Hardness Assurance for Commercial Microelectronics (R L Pease); Switching Oxide Traps (T R Oldham); Online and Realtime Dosimetry Using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (L Dusseau & J Gasiot); and other articles. Readership: Practitioners, researchers, managers and graduate students in electrical and electronic engineering, semiconductor science and technology, and microelectronics."

This is the first-ever book to illustrate the principles and applications of liquid metal biomaterials. Room-temperature liquid metal materials are rapidly emerging as next-generation functional materials that display many unconventional properties superior to those of conventional biomaterials. Their outstanding, unique versatility (“one material, diverse capabilities”) opens many exciting opportunities for the medical sciences. The book reviews representative applications of liquid metal biomaterials from both therapeutic and diagnostic aspects. It also discusses related efforts to employ liquid metals to overcome today’s biomedical challenges. It will provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of the technical advances and fundamental discoveries on the frontier, and thus equip them to investigate and utilize liquid metal biomaterials to tackle various critical problems.

HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE The book contains the latest advances in healthcare and presents them in the frame of the Human-Machine Interface (HMI). The Human-Machine Interface (HMI) industry has witnessed the evolution from a simple push button to a modern touch-screen display. HMI is a user interface that allows humans to operate controllers for machines, systems, or instruments. Most medical procedures are improved by HMI systems, from calling an ambulance to ensuring that a patient receives adequate treatment on time. This book describes the scenario of biomedical technologies in the context of the advanced HMI, with a focus on direct brain-computer connection. The book describes several HMI tools and related techniques for analyzing, creating, controlling, and upgrading healthcare delivery systems, and provides details regarding how advancements in technology, particularly HMI, ensure ethical and fair use in patient care. Audience The target audience for this book is medical personnel and policymakers in healthcare and pharmaceutical professionals, as well as engineers and researchers in computer science and artificial intelligence.

Covers the chemistry and physics of conjugated polymers, and how they can be designed and optimised for various electronic applications.