Technologies

Uniform coverage with porous layers over extended surfaces is beneficial for many purposes. Depending on the nature/composition, thickness and interfaces of the layer, this kind of special coverage can assure pivotal properties such as transparency, bendability, high surface reactivity, intermixing capability. In the long list of desired porous materials, transparent oxides find application in the fields of Photovoltaics, Sensing, Photocatalysis, Water Purification and Splitting, Lithium Batteries and many more.

The platform allows the deployment of a sensor network with peripheral nodes spread on the crop fields or on the environment for the monitoring of crop parameters/environmental parameters. The network architecture integrated LoRa peripheral nodes for short-medium range communication and star-center NB-IoT based for long range communication. It includes a web server and MySQL database for data storage and visualization. The network architecture is scalable to adapt to the area to monitor.

Our team can develop low-cost ultra-flexible sensors integrated on plastic substrate for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and gas detection. These devices combine scalable fabrication technologies, implementing active materials such as nanostructured metal oxides or stack of nanostructures decorated with metal nanoparticles, thus enabling a high sensitivity (in the range of hundreds of ppb). These devices can be applied to numerous industrial and commercial sectors and they can be embedded in systems that are more sophisticated.

IMM has developed tactile sensors for the detection of objects and surface and for the handling of objects with humanoid robots (e-skin). These devices can be integrated on ultra-flexible and high conformable substrates and they can be used for multiple applications: 1) for a correct interaction with objects distributed in complex environment; 2) for a safe short-range interaction between humanoid robot and humans; 3) for fabricating smart wearables for the detection of biometric parameters (e.g. heartbeat); 4) for remotely control rovers with wearable gadgets.