Wearable flexible sensors that ‘beat’ human skin in sensitivity and they could revolutionize many fields, from prosthetics to the work of surgeons. They were developed by Anna Maria Coclite, now a professor of matter physics at the University of Bari, who returned to Italy after 14 years of living and working abroad, first at the MIT in Boston and then at the University of Graz (Austria). . A return brain, which will allow you to continue your work in Italy on the prototype of flexible sensors already developed.
“I intended to return to Puglia – Anna Maria Coclite tells Adnkronos Salute – without sacrificing my career and there was this possibility with the professorship in Bari. Today we continue at the Department of Physics the work on wearable flexible sensors that can be used on prostheses but also – with gloves – by the surgeon. The peculiarity is that they are sensitive, simultaneously, to three stimuli: humidity, pressure and temperature. But above all this sensitivity is on a very small scale, smaller than the ‘resolution’ of human skin which can ‘feel’ objects that have an area of 1mm. Our device is able to perceive below this measure (0.25)”.
There are many fields of application for these sensors, “if developed on special gloves made for surgeons they can help them detect human tissues that change in their stiffness, a vein or a muscle”, adds the professor. The next steps after the prototype? “The direction is to use them in the field of prosthetics or ultrasensitive gloves – he replies – we would then like to test the devices in different environments by collaborating with companies or biomedical institutes that may be interested”.
In 2016, in fact, Coclite won the ERC Starting grant for the ‘Smart Core-shell sensor arrays for artificial skins’ (‘Smart Core’) project, which financed its research on sensors for 1.5 million euros. All this was possible thanks to a new sensor geometry: instead of being made of multiple layers, the ‘Smart Core’ sensors are vertical and extremely small. “In 2023 the research took a further step forward: it won the 150 thousand euro ERC Proof of Concept, thanks to which the researchers are testing the possible commercialization of the sensors developed with Smart Core. This project, which began at Graz University of Technology, has been transferred to UniBa where Coclite and his team are continuing their research activities”.
“From 5 February this year, Anna Maria Coclite arrived at the Inter-University Physics department of UniBa and PoliBa, a department of excellence led by Roberto Bellotti, where she chose to return as a full professor because of international excellence precisely in research on sensors – recalls the University of Bari – And like her, several other former brain drains have been attracted to the same Physics department of Bari in recent years: 3 researchers were hired by the University with Pnrr funds and thus returned to Italy from Spain, France and Poland and two other professors returned from the UK and the USA thanks to ordinary funds”.
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