Ho‐Young Kim

Microrobots that are light and agile yet require no artificial power input can be widely used in medical, military, and industrial applications. As an actuation system to drive such robots, here we report a biologically inspired bilayer structure that harnesses the environmental humidity energy, with ratchets to rectify the motion. We named this actuator-ratchet system the hygrobot. The actuator uses a hygroscopically responsive film consisting of aligned nanofibers produced by directional elect

Hydrogels are promising as materials for soft actuators because of qualities such as softness, transparency, and responsiveness to stimuli. However, weak and slow actuations remain challenging as a result of low modulus and osmosis-driven slow water diffusion, respectively. We used turgor pressure and electroosmosis to realize a strong and fast hydrogel-based actuator. A turgor actuator fabricated with a gel confined by a selectively permeable membrane can retain a high osmotic pressure that dri

When a paintbrush is dipped into a pot of paint and pulled out, surface tension forces cause the individual hairs in the brush to coalesce even as the brush becomes impregnated with paint. We study a simple model of this elastocapillary interaction in the context of the surface-tension-driven vertical rise of a liquid between two long flexible hydrophilic sheets that are held a small distance apart at one end. We provide an analytic theory for the static shapes of the sheets as well as the liqui

A versatile injection-molded platform with fast, robust, and simple liquid patterning capable of 3D co-culture experiments.

We show that a nanoscale polymer solution electrojet can coil to form free-standing hollow pottery as the jet is focused onto a sharp electrode tip. A scaling law is given based on the balance of the electrostatic compression force and the elastic resistance to predict the coil radius and frequency as the functions of relevant physical parameters. The structures formed by the nanofibers can be used in diverse fields of nanotechnology, for example, as nanomagnets, bioscaffolds, and nanochannels.

When a drop is deposited on a superhydrophilic micropillar array, the upper part of the drop (referred to as the bulk) collapses while the bottom part penetrates into the gaps of the array, forming a fringe film. Here we quantify the early stage dynamics of this process using a combination of experiment and theory. We show that the circular front of the fringe film spreads like t 1/2 , t being time, when coupled to the bulk flow. However, the film is found to advance like t 1/3 through faceted z

In this study, detailed experiments were conducted on the combustion and exhaust characteristics of ethanol–diesel blended fuels. The four-stroke four-cylinder common-rail direct injection diesel engine was used. The experiment was carried out at 750 rpm at a low speed idle, and a 40 Nm engine load was applied to simulate the operation of the accessories during the low idle operation of the actual vehicles. The test fuels were four types of ethanol-blended fuel. The ethanol blending ratios were

We mundanely observe cellulose (kitchen) sponges swell while absorbing water. Fluid flows in deformable porous media, such as soils and hydrogels, are classically described on the basis of the theories of Darcy and poroelasticity, where the expansion of media arises due to increased pore pressure. However, the situation is qualitatively different in cellulosic porous materials like sponges because the pore expansion is driven by wetting of the surrounding cellulose walls rather than by increase

Abstract Bubble oscillations play a crucial role in ultrasonic cleaning, a process by which micro- and nanoscale contaminant particles are removed from solid surfaces, such as semiconductor wafers, photomasks and membranes. Although it is well known that the ultrasonic cleaning may damage the functional patterns of ever-shrinking size in current manufacturing technology while removing dust and debris, the mechanisms leading to such damage have been elusive. Here we report observations of the dyn

Spiders use adhesive, stretchable, and translucent webs to capture their prey. However, sustaining the capturing capability of these webs can be challenging because the webs inevitably invite contamination, thus reducing its adhesion force. To overcome these challenges, spiders have developed strategies of using webs to sense prey and clean contaminants. Here, we emulate the capturing strategies of a spider with a single pair of ionic threads based on electrostatics. Our ionic spiderwebs complet

An experimental setup that images the high-speed impact of a microdrop onto solid surfaces is described. The drop generation system provides a stream of monosized microdrops having diameter near 100 μm and the velocity around 10 m/s. The drop train is manipulated to deliver a single drop onto a solid target by selective charging and deflection. The images of drop spreading at different times are obtained by the double-flash photography technique. Representative experimental results are given wit

Using Ar/Air mixture microwave plasma, we investigated the effects of air and gas temperature on the generation of electrons, ozone (O 3 ), and nitric oxide (NO) through experiments and chemical kinetics simulation. The global model (GM) chemical kinetics simulation was used to validate and complement experimental observations. As the air percentages in Ar plasma increase, electrons are mainly generated by reactive oxygen species (ROS), but electron densities decrease. This is why plasma jet len