Liwei Lin (Advisor)

Safe and deformable soft batteries are desirable for modern products that call for good safety features such as cell phones and good conformability to be embedded onto irregular surfaces in electronics systems. Current Li-ion batteries on the commercial market are rigidly packaged and hermetically sealed to prevent: 1) the intrusion of moistures which degrade performances; and 2) the leakage of toxic and flammable electrolytes due to mechanical damages. On the other hand, various deformable/stretchable batteries have been reported in research articles and they have shown good...

Animal skins often possess both functions of sensing and actuating to detect external stimulations and change shapes when needed, respectively. Furthermore, many animals, such as jellyfish and leptocephalus (eel larvae) have tissues that are transparent and ultra-stretchable, which are difficult to build in synthetic sensors and actuators. Moreover, all these living skins have self-healing properties, i.e. to restore their critical functions after being damaged. On the contrary, artificial electronic systems are often brittle and non-transparent. As such, biomimetic, skin-like materials...