Developing Liquid-Metal-based Microfluidic Devices for Force Sensing Applications

Wael Othman

| June 7th 2022 – 11 am, NYUAD C1 (ERB) -045 |

Electronics have been relying on solid, rigid materials for a long time. Counterrally, the emerging “liquid-state electronics” technology based on microfluidics facilitates flexible and stretchable electrical devices for a wide range of applications, e.g., wearables, biomedical, and robotics. In microfluidics-based force sensors, the externally induced delocalization of the working liquid encapsulated within elastomeric structures is utilized as a force-sensing stimulus. The sensitivity and working range can be controlled by a proper choice of design, working liquid, and elastomer. In this seminar, I will present our recent work on microfluidics-based force-sensing devices and discuss the different stages of the study, i.e., fabrication, characterization, and Multiphysics simulation. These soft, elastic, skin-like sensors have a substantial potential to overcome the challenges and limitations of their conventional solid-state MEMS-based counterparts.

Speaker’s Bio

Wael Othman is pursuing his doctoral studies in Mechanical engineering at Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, NY. As part of that, he joined the AMMLab at NYU Abu Dhabi in July 2019 to work on the development of miniaturized tactile sensors to be integrated with laparoscopic surgical instruments to restore the surgeons’ sense of touch during minimally invasive surgery (MIS). His work utilizes the principles of microfluidics to fabricate low-cost, highly flexible force sensors based on a liquid metal and silicone elastomer. Prior to that, Wael obtained his M.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, where he worked as a graduate research assistant on designing and building a low-cost desktop electrochemical metal 3D printer. Before that and during his Physics undergraduate studies at UAE University, he investigated the origins of negative differential resistivity in Nitrogen-doped ZnO nano-ribbons and its effect on gas sensing using Ab-initio methods and First-principle analyses.