Kentaro Kudo

Metachronal wave of artificial cilia array actuated by applied magnetic field

In this paper, a biomimetic microstructure related to cilia, which are effective fluidic and conveying systems in nature, is described. Authors have already reported that a magnetic elastomer pillar actuated by a rotating magnetic field can work like a natural cilium. In the present work, we show examples of a cilia array with a metachronal wave as the next step. A metachronal wave is a sequential action of a number of cilia. It is theoretically known that a metachronal wave gives a higher fluidic efficiency; however, there has been no report on a metachronal wave by artificial cilia. We prepared magnetic elastomer pillars that contain chainlike clusters of magnetic particles. The orientation of chains was set to be different in each pillar so that each pillar will deform with a different phase.

Development of multilayer imprint process for solid oxide fuel cells

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are fuel cells made of ceramics. To increase the SOFC energy density, we developed an SOFC with a wavy electrolyte layer. As a wavy electrolyte has a larger reaction surface area than a flat electrolyte, a higher energy density could be obtained. Our proposed process is named micro-powder imprint (?PI) with a multilayer imprint process that is useful for fabricating a microscale pattern on a ceramic sheet such as an SOFC electrolyte layer. ?PI is based on nanoimprint lithography; therefore, it also exhibits the same advantages of high resolution and mass productivity. The starting material for ?PI is a compound sheet containing ceramic powder and binder materials consisting of thermoplastic resin. In this study, two different sheets were stacked into one sheet as a multilayer sheet for the ?PI process to form a wavy compound sheet. As the initial state of the stacked sheet, including the mechanical properties of each layer, affects the final wavy shape, we changed the material composition. As a result, the SOFCs unit cell with a wavy electrolyte was fabricated. Note that the anode layer was formed at the same time. After adding the cathode layer, we succeeded in preparing a complete cell for testing power generation.

Development of three-dimensional printing system for magnetic elastomer with control of magnetic anisotropy in the structure

In this paper, we report on a new system of three-dimensional (3D) printing for a magnetic elastomer that contains magnetic particles. Not only can we fabricate a three-dimensional structure, but we can also control the magnetically anisotropic property of each position in the structure using the present technique. Our new system employed photocurable poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) as the base material so that a method similar to a conventional 3D printing process with photolithography can be used. A magnetic powder was mixed with photocurable PDMS, and particle chain clusters were obtained by applying a magnetic field during the curing process. These chain clusters provide an anisotropic property in each part of the printed structure. We show some results of preliminary experiments and 3D printed samples in this paper. If the fabricated structure was placed under an applied magnetic field, each chain cluster will cause the rotational moment to be along the magnetic flux line, which can deform a soft matrix body. This deformation can be used as a magnetic actuator for the structure. Variable deformable structures could be developed using the present method.