Browsing by Author "Tutika, Ravi"

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    Octopus-inspired adhesive skins for intelligent and rapidly switchable underwater adhesion
    Frey, Sean T.; Tahidul Haque, A.B.M.; Tutika, Ravi; Krotz, Elizabeth V.; Lee, Chanhong; Haverkamp, Cole B.; Markvicka, Eric J.; Bartlett, Michael D. (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2022-07-13)
    The octopus couples controllable adhesives with intricately embedded sensing, processing, and control to manipulate underwater objects. Current synthetic adhesive–based manipulators are typically manually operated without sensing or control and can be slow to activate and release adhesion, which limits system-level manipulation. Here, we couple switchable, octopus-inspired adhesives with embedded sensing, processing, and control for robust underwater manipulation. Adhesion strength is switched over 450× from the ON to OFF state in <50 ms over many cycles with an actively controlled membrane. Systematic design of adhesive geometry enables adherence to nonideal surfaces with low preload and independent control of adhesive strength and adhesive toughness for strong and reliable attachment and easy release. Our bio-inspired nervous system detects objects and autonomously triggers the switchable adhesives. This is implemented into a wearable glove where an array of adhesives and sensors creates a biomimetic adhesive skin to manipulate diverse underwater objects.
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    Self-healing liquid metal composite for reconfigurable and recyclable soft electronics
    Tutika, Ravi; Tahidul Haque, A.B.M.; Bartlett, Michael D. (Springer Nature, 2021)
    Soft electronics and robotics are in increasing demand for diverse applications. However, soft devices typically lack rigid enclosures which can increase their susceptibility to damage and lead to failure and premature disposal. This creates a need for soft and stretchable functional materials with resilient and regenerative properties. Here we show a liquid metal-elastomerplasticizer composite for soft electronics with robust circuitry that is self-healing, reconfigurable, and ultimately recyclable. This is achieved through an embossing technique for ondemand formation of conductive liquid metal networks which can be reprocessed to rewire or completely recycle the soft electronic composite. These skin-like electronics stretch to 1200% strain with minimal change in electrical resistance, sustain numerous damage events under load without losing electrical conductivity, and are recycled to generate new devices at the end of life. These soft composites with adaptive liquid metal microstructures can find broad use for soft electronics and robotics with improved lifetime and recyclability.