cheukky

Counterfeiting is a global menace endangering financial security, national safety, and public health. Traditional methods like watermarks and QR codes are vulnerable due to deterministic fabrication. Unbreakable security labels with physical unclonable functions (PUFs) offer a promising solution. PUFs leverage inherent randomness to create unique identifiers like fingerprints. Here, diamond-based PUFs, utilizing the stochastic nature of artificial diamond microparticles with silicon-vacancy (SiV) centers, offer a robust and unforgeable solution, providing a new frontier in anti-counterfeiting technology that is both durable and secure.

Hydrogels are promising candidate materials for the construction of soft electronics and biomedical devices due to their mechanical flexibility, structural permeability, and biocompatibility. However, achieving high electrical conductivity and mechanical robustness in hydrogels remains challenging, which limits their practical applications.
Professor Lizhi Xu’s research team has developed a new type of electroconductive hydrogels with outstanding mechanical strength and manufacturability.

The UAV is named Powered-flying Ultra-underactuated LiDAR-sensing Aerial Robot (PULSAR), whose motion in three-dimensional space is controlled by only a single actuator (i.e., motor). The single actuator design can naturally cause self-rotation motion of the UAV body, obviously extending the field of view (FoV) of the onboard LiDAR sensor. Furthermore, it also effectively reduces the energy loss of the propulsion system, allowing PULSAR to save 26.7% of energy consumption compared to a benchmarked quadrotor UAV. Utilizing the extended FoV and onboard computing resource, PULSAR can perform autonomous navigation in unknown environments and detect both static and dynamic obstacles in panoramic views without using any external instruments. PULSAR has large FoV, high flight efficiency, and autonomous navigation ability, which are all beneficial for the environmental observation and information collection. Therefore, it can be used in various applications, such as environment surveying, search and rescue, terrain mapping, and automatic 3D reconstruction.

Tactile e-skins mimicking functions of human skin can sense tactile modalities such as pressure, vibration, temperature, and humidity. They are essential components for smart robotics, health monitoring devices and human–machine interfaces.
However, complicated materials, sophisticated manufacturing, device integration and external power sources are required for most of existing multi-functional e-skins, which severely limit their widespread use.

Aerogels are lightweight materials with extensive microscale pores, which could be used in thermal insulation, energy devices, aerospace structures, as well as emerging technologies of flexible electronics. However, traditional aerogels based on ceramics tend to be brittle, which limits their performance in load-bearing structures. Due to restrictions posed by their building blocks, recently developed classes of polymeric aerogels can only achieve high mechanical strength by sacrificing their structural porosity or lightweight characteristics.