Liwei Lin (Advisor)

Safe and deformable soft batteries are highly desirable for applications such as mobile electronics and conformable systems on irregular surfaces. Conventional Li-ion batteries rely on rigid packaging and hermetic sealing to block moisture intrusion and prevent leakage of toxic, flammable organic electrolytes. In contrast, recently reported deformable or stretchable batteries provide good conformability but suffer rapid performance degradation in ambient conditions, limiting their operating lifetimes. The fundamental challenge is that mechanical softness and gas impermeability are mutually...

This work presents a unified MEMS platform utilizing Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (PMUTs) for dual-mode sensing: continuous volumetric indoor temperature monitoring and multimodal tactile force sensing. By leveraging ultrasonic Time-of-Flight (ToF) and profile scanning, we demonstrate two critical advancements for autonomous systems. First, at the macro-scale, a networked PMUT grid enables "volumetric" temperature monitoring across a 5m range, outperforming traditional pointwise sensors by detecting global and local thermal events for energy-efficient HVAC control....