Welcome to the Laboratory for Soft Machines & Electronics (SME Lab) in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). We aim to exploit the fundamental mechanics and physics of advanced materials, and to design and fabricate novel machines and electronics using advanced technologies to address the grand challenges that we are facing today. We are now focusing on the mechanics, design, and manufacturing of soft materials, soft robotics, self-powered electronics, and 3D/4D printing of multifunctional materials for a variety of applications in healthcare, manufacturing, energy, food, agriculture, infrastructures and space exploration, such as tunable surfaces, medical robots, agriculture robots, personalized health monitoring system, implantable electronics, wave energy harvesters, as well as smart packaging system for supply chain.
Research Hightlight
Novel Triboelectric Nanogenerators
We have developed a new type of wave energy harvester, hierarchically structured triboelectric nanogenerator (HS-TENG) to harvest the huge blue energy for large-scale deployments. This research is published in Nano Energy !
Stretchable Supercapacitors from Crumpled CNT-forests
Stretchable supercapacitors based on crumpled CNT-forests are fabricated, offering a new opportunity for next‐generation self-powered stretchable electronics.