Inkjet printing as novel route towards the development of optical materials Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Polymers can ...
Efficient energy management systems could enable the development of smart contact lenses that can regulate vision and measure physiological signals. Current operational batteries are too bulky to be comfortable for the user and thus to be used for such an application. Therefore, an alternative in the form of photosupercapacitors is proposed, integrating an energy harvesting part and an energy storage part. The former will be composed of a ...
Rapid diagnostic testing at the site of a patient, so-called point-of-care (POC) testing, is essential to provide healthcare when a fully equipped laboratory is not accessible. In developing countries, suitable POC diagnostics could yearly save millions of lives by early diagnosis of a small number of treatable conditions identified by the World Health Organization (WHO). As a result of the inverse correlation between the number of lives ...
The main goal of this PhD research is to develop printed thermoelectric energy harvesters for integration on wearable systems. Different thermoelectric materials that can be processed from solution will be first formulated as printable inks and then characterized. Following, we will take advantage of the precision and versatility of printed electronics techniques to fine-pattern the selected materials on flexible substrates. The process and ...
Diffractive optical elements with high efficiency can be used for extended reality displays or switchable optical interconnects. The combination of liquid crystals with patterned photoalignment makes it possible to define structures with the required optical functionalities in an accessible and effective way. A very high optical efficiency can be obtained with these kind of micrometer thin flat optical components. Through a polymerization ...
Smart contact lenses (SCL), composed of electronics integrated into traditional contact lenses, will greatly contribute to the next generation of wearable and biomedical devices. However, their small size and close contact with the body challenge their potential. Power autonomy is an issue owing to the lack of long-lasting batteries that are small and flexible enough to be imperceptible by the user. A solution to this issue is to integrate ...
Smart contact lenses (SCL), composed of electronics integrated into traditional contact lenses, will greatly contribute to the next generation of wearable and biomedical devices. However, their small size and close contact with the body challenge their potential. Power autonomy is an issue owing to the lack of long-lasting batteries that are small and flexible enough to be imperceptible by the user. A solution to this issue is to integrate ...
Arrangements of material at the nanometer scale produce a dazzling array of colors, ranging from
ultra violet to red, without pigments. These so-called structural colors are particularly distinctive in
birds, which can produce non-iridescent colors (such as the blues of blue tits) using matrices of
keratin and air, or iridescent colors (such as the flashy colors of hummingbirds) using arrays of
...
Our digital world is growing at great speed implying the constant need for improving the network quality, broadening band widths allowing fast data traffic. Electro-optical modulators are used in these state-of-the-art networks and are much faster that classic electrical switches. Tuned constructive and destructive interaction of light waves is achieved by changing the refractive index of the modulator material. A piezoelectric material as ...
The dynamics of a gas-liquid interface stems from a synergy of forces, primarily involving inertia, viscous dissipation, gravity and capillarity. This work focuses on the latter, which arises from the surface tension at the gas-liquid interface and the interactions with the solid surface. This phenomenon impacts many industrial applications, such as coating, inkjet printing, oil recovery, microfluidics, and medical laboratory-on-a-chip ...