Abstract:  Miniaturized, low-cost, wireless electronic devices with meteorological sensors can serve as Lagrangian tracers and provide complementary and important information for pollution sensing, environmental monitoring, storm observations, etc. We developed and examined passive structures designed for controlled, unpowered flight inspired by wind-dispersed seeds, combining fundamental studies in Lagrangian dynamics and novel soft electronics developed for biomedical applications. Controlled mechanical buckling techniques in assembly of three-dimensional (3D) mesostructures provide access to miniature, 3D fliers optimized for such purposes, in processes that…

Abstract:  The long-duration space mission demands a paradigm shift from on-ground to in-space ‘born-certified’ manufacturing because material characterization/testing facilities are simply not available there. This is, however, not trivial due to the lack of an approach of correlating in-space manufacturing conditions with the material microstructure evolution in situ. It remains a challenge using traditional single-scale simulation tool to address the complexity induced by the simultaneous occurrence of microscale plastic flow, nanoscale thermal transport, and atomic-level ion hopping in materials when…