There is a trend in electronics towards becoming shapeable (flexible, stretchable or printable), which allows electronic components to be arbitrarily reshaped after fabrication. This unique feature offers new unexplored functionalities for the markets of consumer electronics and eMobility. Shapeable electronics and optoelectronics have been developed already for a few years.
Very recently, we added a new member to this family - the shapeable magnetic sensorics, which pave the way towards the development of a unique class of devices with important functionality being not only shapeable and fast, but also with the ability to react and respond to a magnetic field. Shapeable magnetic sensor devices could enable the fabrication of, e.g. health monitoring systems, where large-angle folding of the micrometer-sized functional elements is a crucial prerequisite for a successful implementation.
In the ERC project SMaRT we aim to develop shapeable magnetoelectronics to the industry-ready product and integrate these magnetic field sensorics into flexible large area multifunctional devices consisting of flexible batteries, communication modules and different types of sensing elements, e.g. environmental, chemical, temperature.
Recent Highlights
| 12/2021 | Denys Makarov receives a Medal of the International Association of Advanced Materials |
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 | Denys Makarov received a Medal of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) in recognition for his contribution to the development of skin-conformal flexible and printable magnetoelectronics. |
| 06/2021 | Paper featured as a back cover page of Advanced Functional Materials |
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 | Our paper on the realization of flexible magnetoreceptors with tunable intrinsic logic for on-skin touchless human-machine interfaces is highlighted with a back cover page of Advanced Functional Materials. Artificial magnetoception, i.e., electronically expanding human perception to detect magnetic fields, is a new and yet unexplored way for interacting with our surroundings. Here, we present skin-compliant touchless interactive devices based on spin-valves with out-of-plane sensitivity to magnetic fields. These devices reveal tunable logic characteristics, as needed for intuitive, energy efficient and insensitive to external magnetic disturbances magnetoreceptive human-machine interfaces. This work is a result of a fruitful cooperation between the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., Università Politecnica delle Marche (group of Prof. Gianni Barucca), Politecnico di Milano (group of Prof. Christian Rinaldi), University of Augsburg (group of Prof. Manfred Albrecht), and CNR Istituto di Struttura della Materia (group of Dr. Gaspare Varvaro). P. Makushko, E. S. Oliveros Mata, G. S. Cañón Bermúdez, M. Hassan, S. Laureti, C. Rinaldi, F. Fagiani, G. Barucca, N. Schmidt, Y. Zabila, T. Kosub, R. Illing, O. Volkov, I. Vladymyrskyi, J. Fassbender, M. Albrecht, G. Varvaro, and D. MakarovFlexible magnetoreceptor with tunable intrinsic logic for on-skin touchless human-machine interfaces Adv. Funct. Mater. 31, 2101089 (2021). URL PDF |
| 06/2021 | Paper featured as a cover page of Advanced Materials |
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 | Our paper on the realization of reconfigurable magnetic origami actuators with on-board sensing is highlighted with a cover page of Advanced Materials. We report on magnetic origami actuators equipped with highly flexible magnetic field sensors allowing to monitor the shape of the actuator and detect its magnetization state. The on-board magnetic field sensors enable feedback controls and guided assembly. These actuators are based on composite films of ferromagnetic microparticles embedded in shape-memory polymer films. Photothermal heating from light and applied magnetic fields enable on-demand reconfigurability. This work is a result of a fruitful cooperation between the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., Elon University (Prof. Benjamin A. Evans) and North Carolina State University (group of Prof. Joseph B. Tracy). M. Ha, G. S. Cañón Bermúdez, J. A.-C. Liu, E. S. Oliveros Mata, B. A. Evans, J. B. Tracy, and D. MakarovReconfigurable magnetic origami actuators with on-board sensing for guided assembly Adv. Mater. 33, 2008751 (2021). URL PDF |
| 03/2021 | Paper featured with a frontispiece of Advanced Materials |
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 | Highly compliant electronics, naturally conforming to human skin, represent a paradigm shift in the interplay with our surroundings. Solution-processable printing technologies are yet to be developed to comply with extreme requirements to mechanical conformability of on-skin appliances. Here, we demonstrate the first highly-compliant, printable and stretchable giant magnetoresistive (GMR) sensors capable of detection in low magnetic field and sustaining high-performance magneto-resistive sensing under extreme mechanical deformation of up to 16 µm of bending radii and 100% of stretching state. These printable giant magnetoresistive sensors exhibit 2 orders of magnitude boost in sensitivity to small magnetic field (0.88 mT) with excellent mechanical compliance in comparison with state-of-the-art printable magnetic field sensors. We feature the potential of our highly-compliant and printable magnetoresistive sensors in augmented reality settings, where sensor-functionalized fingers conducts remote and touchless controls of virtual objects manageable for scrolling electronic documents and zooming maps under tiny permanent magnet. M. Ha, G. S. Cañón Bermúdez, T. Kosub, I. Mönch, Y. Zabila, E. S. Oliveros Mata, R. Illing, Y. Wang, J. Fassbender, and D. Makarov Printable and Stretchable Giant Magnetoresistive Sensors for Highly Compliant and Skin-Conformal Electronics Adv. Mater. 33, 2005521 (2021). URL PDF |
| 01/2021 | Best poster prize for Dr. Oleksandr Pylypovskyi |
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 | Dr. Oleksandr Pylypovskyi was awarded the best poster prize at the 736. WE-Heraeus-Seminar "Magnetism at the Nanoscale: Imaging - Fabrication - Physics”, which was held online in Bad Honnef, Germany for his work “Geometrically driven chiral effects in curvilinear antiferromagnetic spin chains”. Our warmest congratulations to Oleksandr! The original work is published here: O. V. Pylypovskyi, D. Y. Kononenko, K. V. Yershov, U. K. Rößler, A. V. Tomilo, J. Fassbender, J. van den Brink, D. Makarov, and D. D. ShekaCurvilinear One-Dimensional Antiferromagnets Nano Letters 20, 8157 (2020). URL |
| 01/2021 | Paper featured as a cover page of Advanced Intelligent Systems |
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 | Actuation-assisted bioanalysis represents an emerging application of micromachines, including microactuators, motors, and microrobotic devices. Here, micromachines consisting of tailorable microcompartments are synthesized by microfluidics-directed assembly. In addition to controlling the geometric parameters of the compartments, a novel emulsion fission approach is devised to precisely allocate the magnetic content in between the compartments of the dimer structures. This unlocks a couple of new degrees of freedom to engineer magnetic coupling in discrete magnetic structure assemblies and uncovers a series of multifunctional microactuators for complex and dynamic bioanalysis. This work is a result of a fruitful cooperation between the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., The University of Technology Sydney (group of Dr. Gungun Lin and Prof. Dayong Jin) and State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (group of Prof. Jun Lin). G. Lin, Y. Liu, G. Huang, Y. Chen, D. Makarov, J. Lin, Z. Quan, and D. Jin3D Rotation-Trackable and Differentiable Micromachines with Dimer-Type Structures for Dynamic Bioanalysis Advanced Intelligent Systems 3, 2000205 (2021). URL PDF |
| 12/2020 | Paper featured as a cover page of Lab on Chip |
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 | Our paper on the realization of kinetic bioassay platform based on coding and decoding of stray magnetic fields of superparamagnetic beads is highlighted with a cover page of Lab on Chip. We report that stray magnetic fields can code and decode a collection of hierarchically-assembled beads. By the microfluidic assembling of mesoscopic superparamagnetic cores, diverse and non-volatile stray magnetic field response can be built in the series of microscopic spheres, dumbbells, pears, chains and triangles. Remarkably, the set of stray magnetic field fingerprints are readily discerned by a compact giant magnetoresistance sensor for parallelised screening of multiple distinctive pathogenic DNAs. This opens up the magneto-multiplexing opportunity and could enable streamlined assays to incorporate magneto-mixing, washing, enrichment and separation of analytes. This strategy therefore suggests a potential point-of-care testing solution for efficient kinetic assays. This work is a result of a fruitful cooperation between the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., The University of Technology Sydney (group of Dr. Gungun Lin and Prof. Dayong Jin) and Minomic International Ltd. (group of Bradley J. Walsh). Y. Liu, G. Lin, Y. Chen, I. Mönch, D. Makarov, B. J. Walsh, and D. JinCoding and decoding stray magnetic fields for multiplexing kinetic bioassay platform Lab Chip 20, 4561 (2020). URL |
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