Recent progress in electronic skin or e-skin research is broadly reviewed, focusing on technologies needed in three main applications: skin-attachable electronics, robotics, and prosthetics. First, since e-skin will be exposed to prolonged stresses of various kinds and needs to be conformally adhered to irregularly shaped surfaces, materials with intrinsic stretchability and self-healing properties are of great importance. Second, tactile sensing capability such as the detection of pressure, strain, slip, force vector, and temperature are important for health monitoring in skin attachable devices, and to enable object manipulation and detection of surrounding environment for robotics and prosthetics. For skin attachable devices, chemical and electrophysiological sensing and wireless signal communication are of high significance to fully gauge the state of health of users and to ensure user comfort. For robotics and prosthetics, large-area integration on 3D surfaces in a facile and scalable manner is critical. Furthermore, new signal processing strategies using neuromorphic devices are needed to efficiently process tactile information in a parallel and low power manner. For prosthetics, neural interfacing electrodes are of high importance. These topics are discussed, focusing on progress, current challenges, and future prospects.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/adma.201904765

Electronic Skin: Recent Progress and Future Prospects for Skin‐Attachable Devices for Health Monitoring, Robotics, and Prosthetics

A review on dark fermentative biohydrogen production from organic biomass: Process parameters and use of by-products

A review of the production and applications of waste-derived volatile fatty acids

Anaerobic digestion of food waste for volatile fatty acids (VFAs) production with different types of inoculum: Effect of pH

Volatile fatty acids production from food waste: effects of pH, temperature, and organic loading rate.

Anaerobic organic acid production of food waste in once-a-day feeding and drawing-off bioreactor

Vascularization, the formation of new blood vessels, is an essential biological process. As the vasculature is involved in various fundamental physiological phenomena and closely related to several human diseases, it is imperative that substantial research is conducted on characterizing the vasculature and its related diseases. A significant evolution has been made to describe the vascularization process so that in vitro recapitulation of vascularization is possible. The current microfluidic systems allow elaborative research on the effects of various cues for vascularization, and furthermore, in vitro technologies have a great potential for being applied to the vascular disease models for studying pathological events and developing drug screening platforms. Here, we review methods of fabrication for microfluidic assays and inducing factors for vascularization. We also discuss applications using engineered vasculature such as in vitro vascular disease models, vasculature in organ-on-chips and drug screening platforms.

Vasculature-On-A-Chip for In Vitro Disease Models

Intrinsically Stretchable Multi-functional Fiber with Energy Harvesting and Strain Sensing Capability

Korean food wastes were anaerobically digested to produce volatile fatty acids (VFA) that can be used as a carbon source in biological nutrient removal in a sequential batch reactor (SBR). Acetate, propionate and butyrate were produced at a yield of 379–400 g VFA/kg VS0 (initial volatile solids). The ratio of SCOD (Soluble Chemical Oxygen Demand) of VFA to ammonia nitrogen (N) was in the range of 36.2–36.5 and the ratio of SCOD to phosphorus was between 151 and 162. The removal rate of nitrogen and phosphorus improved from 44% and 37% to 92% and 73%, respectively when the VFA were added to the influent of the Taejon municipal wastewater plant. The concentration of nitrogen and phosphorus were maintained below 3 mg/l and 1 mg/l, respectively. The N- and P-content of the food waste was low enough not to influence the final N- and P-concentrations of the wastewater.

Volatile fatty acids production from food wastes and its application to biological nutrient removal

Modeling of the operation of sequential batch reactor (SBR) was performed to find out optimum design parameters for simultaneous removal of nitrogen and phosphorus in a small-scale wastewater treatment plant. The models were set up with material balances on SBR operation and Monod kinetics. The model parameters were obtained to best fit the experimental results in a small scale SBR. The models were useful in optimizing hydraulic retention time (HRT) and successfully simulated operations of SBR in a larger scale. Especially the model predicted well the reactions occurring in the filling period as well as the effect of dilution, and evaluated the performance of SBR process under diverse operating conditions.

Seongjin Lim

Papers

Anaerobic organic acid production of food waste in once-a-day feeding and drawing-off bioreactor

Vasculature-On-A-Chip for In Vitro Disease Models

Intrinsically Stretchable Multi-functional Fiber with Energy Harvesting and Strain Sensing Capability

Volatile fatty acids production from food wastes and its application to biological nutrient removal

Simulation of sequential batch reactor (SBR) operation for simultaneous removal of nitrogen and phosphorus