Highly Conductive MXene/PEDOT:PSS-Integrated Poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) Hydrogels for Bioinspired Somatosensory Soft Actuators

Sophisticated sensing and actuation capabilities of many living organisms in nature have inspired scientists to develop biomimetic somatosensory soft robots. Herein, the design and fabrication of homogeneous and highly conductive hydrogels for bioinspired somatosensory soft actuators are reported. The conductive hydrogels are synthesized by in situ copolymerization of conductive surface-functionalized MXene/Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(styrenesulfonate) ink with thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) hydrogels. The resulting hydrogels are found to exhibit high conductivity (11.76 S m⁻¹), strain sensitivity (GF of 9.93), broad working strain range (≈560% strain), and high stability after over 300 loading–unloading cycles at 100% strain. Importantly, shape-programmable somatosensory hydrogel actuators with rapid response, light-driven remote control, and self-sensing capability are developed by chemically integrating the conductive hydrogels with a structurally colored polymer. As the proof-of-concept illustration, structurally colored hydrogel actuators are applied for devising light-driven programmable shape-morphing of an artificial octopus, an artificial fish, and a soft gripper that can simultaneously monitor their own motions via real-time resistance variation. This work is expected to offer new insights into the design of advanced somatosensory materials with self-sensing and actuation capabilities, and pave an avenue for the development of soft-matter-based self-regulatory intelligence via built-in feedback control that is of paramount significance for intelligent soft robotics and automated machines.     

Vapor Phase Dealloying Derived Nanoporous Co@CoO/RuO2 Composites for Efficient and Durable Oxygen Evolution Reaction (Adv. Funct. Mater. 17/2023)

The development of low-cost and effective oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts to expedite the slow kinetics of water splitting is crucial for increasing the efficiency of energy conversion from electricity to hydrogen fuel. Herein, 3D bicontinuous nanoporous Co@CoO/RuO₂ composites with tunable sizes and chemical compositions are fabricated by introducing vapor phase dealloying of cobalt-based alloys. The influence of physical parameters on the formation of nanoporous Co substrates with various feature ligament sizes is systematically investigated. The CoO/RuO₂ shell is constructed by integrating a thin layer of RuO₂ on the inner surface of nanoporous Co, where the CoO interlayer is formed by annealing oxidization. The composite catalyst delivers an ultralow overpotential of 198 mV at 10 mA cm⁻², Tafel slope of 57.1 mV dec⁻¹, and long-term stability of 50 h. The superior OER activity and fast reaction kinetics are attributed to charge transfer through the coupling of Co O Ru bonds at the interface and the excellent nanopore connectivity, while the durability originates from the highly stable CoO/RuO₂ interface.     

Improved DV-Hop based on parallel and compact whale optimization algorithm for localization in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Networks - Improving localization performance is one of the critical issues in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). As a range-free localization algorithm, Distance Vector-Hop(DV-Hop) is...     

Oscillatory singular integrals on and Hardy spaces

We consider boundedness properties of oscillatory singular integrals on and Hardy spaces. By constructing a phase function, we prove that boundedness may fail while boundedness holds for all . This shows that the theory and theory for such operators are fundamentally different.

     

Acceleration and filtering in the generalized Landweber iteration using a variable shaping matrix

The generalized Landweber iteration with a variable shaping matrix is used to solve the large linear system of equations arising in the image reconstruction problem of emission tomography. The method is based on the property that once a spatial frequency image component is almost recovered within in in the generalized Landweber iteration, this component will still stay within in during subsequent iterations with a different shaping matrix, as long as this shaping matrix satisfies the convergence criterion for the component. Two different shaping matrices are used: the first recovers low-frequency image components; and the second may be used either to accelerate the reconstruction of high-frequency image components, or to attenuate these components to filter the image. The variable shaping matrix gives results similar to truncated inverse filtering, but requires much less computation and memory, since it does not rely on the singular value decomposition.