Projects

Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting

To increase operational lifetimes of wearable electronics, new energy harvesting solutions are needed. These projects focus on developing bendable and stretchable wearable thermoelectric generators to converter temperature differentials from the body into voltage. The first PPG sensor powered by body heat is demonstrated.

Soft Robotic Actuation and Harvesting

Thermally actuated soft robotic muscles lack cooling methods for precise closed-loop control. To address this shortcoming, this project focused on developing stretchable and bendable Peltier coolers for duel thermoelectric heating and cooling of liquid crystal elastomer actuators. These actuators enable single input multi-directional actuation and double as energy harvesters recycling energy from their environment.

Wireless Soft Robots & Smart Matter

Current wireless robots require batteries for energy storage, limiting operational lifetime and increasing weight. To address this, these projects focused on developing liquid crystal elastomer based soft robots with liquid metal composite patch antennas to absorb wirelessly beamformed energy. This method enables a novel robotics platform for battery free soft robots.

Liquid Metal Composites

My current research is focusing on the interactions between liquid metal droplets and 2D MXenes sheets in elastomers to improve elastomer composite performance. This work is focusing on combining the excellent thermal and dielectric properties of Ti₃C₂T_x MXenes with the mechanical properties of EGaIn liquid metal to improve thermal and dielectric performance in these elastomers.