The aim of Anna Maria Coclite’s ERC-sponsored project “Smart Core” is to develop a hybrid material which can perceive temperature, humidity and pressure simultaneously and react accordingly. State-of-the-art materials currently include three different sensors for the perception and transmission of individual stimuli. The three-in-one hybrid material which Coclite and her team will work on simplifies the sensors of artificial skin and can increase sensory resolution 20-fold in comparison to human skin. This hugely increased sensory resolution of the novel hybrid material is achieved using a variety of nanorods on a surface. The “smart core” of these nanorods, hence the name of the project, consists of a polymer which responds to temperature and humidity by expanding. The change in thickness of the polymer exerts pressure on its shell, i.e. the nanorods, and these react sensitively to the pressure and in turn trigger stimuli. The hybrid material will achieve some 2,000 sensors per square millimetre, and thus spatial resolutions far below one millimetre, which corresponds to that of the human fingertip.

TU Graz News