Novel Soft Meals Developed by 3D Printing

Recently, 3D printing is being applied to various fields. 3D printing of foods has been developed; however, there are many challenges. To overcome the challenges, we have started a new research group named “Yonezawa Itadakimasu Research Group,” to focus on the development of 3D printing applications for manufacturing food. We have developed Novel jelly foods that are shaped by 3D printed molds. Fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer for food manufacturing makes the 3D printed molds. First step of making 3D printing mold is to print a cast. Then, food grade silicone is poured into the cast to make a mold. This type of 3D printed mold can be used widely, such as making sweets, restaurant menus, and care foods by changing the design depending on the use of application. Secondly, we started to develop 3D food printers. This type of challenge to develop future foods by 3D printing technology may have a major impact on the care food because the looks of foods are important and will be improved by 3D printing

Preface—JES focus issue on ubiquitous sensors and systems for IoT

This focus issue of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) is devoted to Ubiquitous Sensors and Systems for IoT. Ubiquitous sensors are becoming an integral part of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and progress in this domain can be seen each month. The promise is that everyone and everything will be connected via wireless data collection, and services like healthcare will be brought to everyone, everywhere, anytime, for virtually any need

MXene-polymer hybrid composites for advanced energy storage: Insights into supercapacitors and batteries

Modern energy storage technologies are an active area of research because of their increasing demand in electronic gadgets, automotive, and electric vehicle applications. Supercapacitors and batteries substantially meet such needs due to their internal surface area, high surface-to-volume ratio, as well as high energy density and mobility of the two-dimensional (2D) materials. As a result, 2D materials—particularly MXene, comprised of carbide nitride and corresponding combinations—are ideal options for energy storage devices and applications. The present review focuses on MXene and corresponding composites—especially polymer-based. We also provide an overview of MXene and polymer harnessing methods, as well as corresponding, e.g., electrical and mechanical features. The use of MXene and polymeric materials in batteries and supercapacitors—as well as upcoming difficulties and results—are all covered in the context of energy storage applications

Micropatternable multifunctional nanocomposite polymers for flexible soft MEMS applications

This thesis describes the fabrication, micro-machining, and characterization of novel multifunctional nanocomposite polymers for flexible microsystems.Various elastomers, primarily polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a silicone based elastomer, are chosen as substrate materials to create new flexible microsystems because of numerous benefits of PDMS including flexibility, biocompatibility, low cost, low toxicity, high oxidative and thermal stability, optical transparency, low permeability to water, low electrical conductivity, and ease of micropatterning. However, most devices to date based on PDMS are passive, as making active devices out of PDMS is extremely challenging.When PDMS is bonded to substrates with conventionally-realized active components like electrodes, heaters, sensors, actuators, etc., it is rendered inflexible – defeating one of its key benefits. For example, the common method of bonding PDMS with glass renders the resulting devices completely inflexible.If metals or alloys are deposited on PDMS, the weak adhesion between them and PDMS leads to microcracks when the substrates are flexed,bent,or twisted.This leads to electrical disconnection and device failure.The focus of this thesis is the development of novel approaches to the realization of active-component based highly flexible microsystems employing PDMS and/or other elastomer materials.To overcome problems with incorporating active devices while maintaining system flexibility, various new materials and methods of microfabricating them are developed.These newly developed electrically conductive and magnetic nanocomposite polymers deliver flexibility similar to undoped and insulating PDMS, yet provide functionality for active device development similar to the inclusion of inflexible metals and other functional materials.These new polymers can also be easily micromicromolded using conventional PDMS processing, such as soft lithography techniques. A new hybrid microfabrication process for combining micromolded nanocomposite with undoped PDMS polymer is also developed to demonstrate the potential of the new polymers to be incorporated into fully flexible systems containing active components. Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is also explored as a new molding substrate for small and large area microfabrication. Applications of these multifunctional nanocomposites include shape-conformable microelectrodes, hard magnetic microactuators, signal routing for Lab on a Chip (LOC) and many other devices requiring flexible microsystems and electronics

Impact of annealing on the growth dynamics of indium sulphide buffer layers

Thin films of Indium sulphide are deposited on corning glass substrate by thermal evaporation at room temperature (300 K). The as-deposited films were annealed from 373 to 723 K under vacuum ∼1 × 10−3 mbar. An amorphous phase is obtained from 300 to 473 K; the polycrystalline β-In2S3 emerges at 523 K, and In2O3 is grown at 723 K. The intermediary phases of β-In2S3 and In2O3 are perceived from 573 to 673 K. A clear distinction between the morphology of β-In2S3 and In2O3 was observed in the micrographs of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The β-In2S3 dominated films provide absorption coefficient (α) from 18 to 25 × 104 cm−1, while α values of In2O3 layers lie within 1–5 × 104 cm−1. The bandgap (Eg) of β-In2S3 thin films is low (2.34 eV), and that of In2O3 is high (3.47 eV); however, the intermediary phases of β-In2S3 and In2O3 exhibit bandgap tunning from 2.30 to 3.14 eV. Moreover, the β-In2S3 shows the highest carrier concentration (Nd; 3.25 × 1018 cm−3), In2O3 provides the highest mobility (μ; 228 Cm2/V.s), and intermediary phases exhibit the lowest resistivity (ρ; 1.27 × 103 Ω/cm) within the existing forms. The thin films β-In2S3 phase grown at 523 and 573 K meet its stoichiometric ratio. In comparison, the In2O3 phase emerges under high oxygen and sulphur deficit conditions. The films are suitable for photo-conduction devices and in the buffer/window layer of PV solar cell design

A New Low-Temperature Electrochemical Hydrocarbon and NOx Sensor

In this article, a new investigation on a low-temperature electrochemical hydrocarbon and NOx sensor is presented. Based on the mixed-potential-based sensing scheme, the sensor is constructed using platinum and metal oxide electrodes, along with an Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ)/Strontium Titanate (SrTiO3) thin-film electrolyte. Unlike traditional mixed-potential sensors which operate at higher temperatures (>400 °C), this potentiometric sensor operates at 200 °C with dominant hydrocarbon (HC) and NOx response in the open-circuit and biased modes, respectively. The possible low-temperature operation of the sensor is speculated to be primarily due to the enhanced oxygen ion conductivity of the electrolyte, which may be attributed to the space charge effect, epitaxial strain, and atomic reconstruction at the interface of the YSZ/STO thin film. The response and recovery time for the NOx sensor are found to be 7 s and 8 s, respectively. The sensor exhibited stable response even after 120 days of testing, with an 11.4% decrease in HC response and a 3.3% decrease in NOx response

Local-Topology-Based Scaling for Distance Preserving Dimension Reduction Method to Improve Classification of Biomedical Data-Sets

Dimension reduction is often used for several procedures of analysis of high dimensional biomedical data-sets such as classification or outlier detection. To improve the performance of such data-mining steps, preserving both distance information and local topology among data-points could be more useful than giving priority to visualization in low dimension. Therefore, we introduce topology-preserving distance scaling (TPDS) to augment a dimension reduction method meant to reproduce distance information in a higher dimension. Our approach involves distance inflation to preserve local topology to avoid collapse during distance preservation-based optimization. Applying TPDS on diverse biomedical data-sets revealed that besides providing better visualization than typical distance preserving methods, TPDS leads to better classification of data points in reduced dimension. For data-sets with outliers, the approach of TPDS also proves to be useful, even for purely distance-preserving method for achieving better convergence