Zhengwei Li's blog

In this work, we presented biohybrid electronic robots (eBiobot) powered by optogenetic skeletal muscles and controlled by wireless optoelectronics, allowing remote control of switching, steering, and other more sophisticated functions. The eBiobot inherits the structural concept motivated by a physiological muscle-tendon-bone architecture from previously demonstrated walking robots, where 3D engineered skeletal muscle tissue forms around an asymmetric hydrogel scaffold.

There are multiple open positions available in Dr. Zhengwei Li's research group in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. Our research group works on the interface between human and machines to create novel devices and technologies for addressing grand challenges in health, medicine and robotics. The current research topics include Curvy wearable electronics, biohybrid living robotics, biomedical devices, bioelectronic neural interfaces, etc. 

Postdoc Position:

Octopus, clingfish, and larva use soft cups to attach to surfaces under water. Recently, various bioinspired cups have been engineered. However, the mechanisms of their attachment and detachment remain elusive. Using a novel microcup, fabricated by two-photon lithography, coupled with in situ pressure sensor and observation cameras, we reveal the detailed nature of its attachment/detachment under water.

We report a manufacturing technology, called conformal additive stamp (CAS) printing and show that it can be used to reliably manufacture electronic devices with 3D shapes. Our CAS printing approach employs a pneumatically inflated elastomeric balloon as a conformal stamping medium to pick up pre-fabricated electronic devices and print them onto 3D surfaces to create devices with curvy shapes including electrically small antennas, hemispherical solar cells and smart contact lenses.

Pumps are critical life-sustaining components for all animals. At the earliest stages of life, the tubular embryonic heart works as a valveless pump capable of generating unidirectional blood flow. Inspired by this elementary pump, we developed the first example of a biohybrid valveless pump-bot powered by engineered skeletal muscle. Our pump-bot consists of a soft hydrogel tube connected at both ends to a stiffer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) scaffold, creating an impedance mismatch.

Optical devices and systems with tunable optical transmittance have recently attracted great interest due to their wide range of applications. However, the reported methods of realizing tunable optical transmittance still suffer from complex fabrication processes, high cost, unstable materials or low tuning range. In this study, we report a simple, cheap, and highly effective approach to achieve large tuning range of optical transmittance through harnessing surface wrinkling-cracking patterns on PDMS films.

In this work, a theoretical study is performed to quantitatively understand the van der Waals interactions between single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and sapphire substrates. The energetically preferred alignment directions of SWNTs on A-, R- and M-planes and the random alignment on the C-plane predicted by this study are all in good agreement with experiments. It is also shown that smaller SWNTs have better alignment than larger SWNTs due to their stronger interaction with sapphire substrate.