A Tactile Sensor Device Exploiting the Tunable Sensitivity of Copper-PDMS Piezoresistive Composite

Abstract A low cost and highly mechanically flexible 8x8 pressure matrix sensor with dedicated electronics has been fabricated with an innovative metal-elastomer composite material. Under the action of a compressive stress the material exhibits a giant piezoresistive effect varying its electrical resistance of several orders of magnitude. This phenomenon can be tuned by changing the material composition parameters, directly modifying the sensitivity of the sensor. The micro casting fabrication technique, used for the preparation of self standing sheet of functional material, gives the possibility of easily fabricating complex-shaped structure suitable for integration on robot surface for tactile sensing. The sensor has been tested with a customized electronic circuit after an exhaustive characterization of the functional properties of the material

Focalization performance study of a novel bulk acoustic wave device

This work illustrates focalization performances of a silicon‐based bulk acoustic wave device applied for the separation of specimens owing to micrometric dimensions. Samples are separated in the microfluidic channel by the presence of an acoustic field, which focalizes particles or cells according to their mechanical properties compared to the surrounded medium ones. Design and fabrication processes are reported, followed by focalization performance tests conducted either with synthetic particles or cells. High focalization performances occurred at different microparticle concentrations. In addition, preliminary tests carried out with HL‐60 cells highlighted an optimal separation performance at a high flow rate and when cells are mixed with micro and nanoparticles without affecting device focalization capabilities. These encouraging results showed how this bulk acoustic wave device could be exploited to develop a diagnostic tool for early diagnosis or some specific target therapies by separating different kinds of cells or biomarkers possessing different mechanical properties such as shapes, sizes and densities

Mucinous breast cancer: A narrative review of the literature and a retrospective tertiary single-centre analysis

We reviewed literature and our data to find out mucinous breast cancer's overall survival (OS), disease free survival (DFS) and if there are differences between pure mucinous breast cancer and mixed mucinous breast cancer in terms of OS and DFS