Minghan Hu

Last Name

Hu

First Name

Minghan

ORCID

0000-0002-9001-6780

Organisational unit

08705 - Gruppe Pané Vidal

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Publications1 - 10 of 13

A Covalently Bonded Exchange Coupled Nanomagnet-Based Hydrogel Composite for Microrobotic Applications
Hertle, Lukas; Ko, Hyeon; Gantenbein, Valentin; et al. (2025)
Advanced Intelligent Systems
The last decade has witnessed rapid progress in the development of soft microrobots for biomedical applications, largely powered by the incorporation of new materials in their design to address various challenges. Herein, a unique magnetic nanoparticle-hydrogel composite designed for microrobot applications is introduced. This composite comprises iron platinum-zinc ferrite nanoparticles whose magnetic properties are enhanced by magnetic exchange-coupling behavior. The introduction of zinc ferrite further allows for grafting alkyne-bearing ligands on the nanoparticles, enabling them to be covalently immobilized within the hydrogel framework via azide-alkyne cycloaddition, thereby improving the composite's stability. Using a template-assisted 3D fabrication technique, the feasibility of using this composite for soft microrobots is demonstrated. Hence, one can assume this straightforward procedure to be easily adapted to other material systems, facilitating the creation of more customized soft microrobots.
Oxalate metal-organic framework derived atomic Ru³⁺-doped Co(OH)₂ nanosheets for a highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction
Zou, Yizhong; Zhang, Wen-Da; Hu, Minghan; et al. (2023)
Sustainable Energy & Fuels
Atomic Ru-doped cobalt hydroxides (Ru-Co(OH)(2)) are prepared from atomic Ru-doped oxalate metal-organic frameworks. There is a strong electronic interaction between Co and Ru atoms. In addition, the incorporation of Ru3+ favors the formation of well-defined two-dimensional nanosheets and thus greatly increased the electrochemically active surface area of the catalyst. The as-prepared Ru-Co(OH)(2) with a Ru mass loading of 5.1 wt% exhibits the highest intrinsic activity and the best catalytic performance towards the hydrogen evolution reaction, showing a very small overpotential of 36 mV at 30 mA cm(-2) in 1.0 M KOH, which surpasses that of the Pt/C catalyst.
Microcapsule-Based Self-Reporting Materials: Moving Beyond Detection Toward Quantification of Microscale Damage
Hu, Minghan (2026)
ChemSystemsChem
Inspired by biological systems that can visualize damage through optical signal such as bruising or bleeding, microcapsule-based self-reporting materials offer a promising strategy for autonomous detection of mechanical stress. These systems embed dye-filled microcapsules in polymer matrices, which rupture under stress to release optical signals. However, most of these systems only indicate whether damage has occurred, without providing information about how much damage or force was involved. This concept paper introduces self-reporting microcapsule systems and explores how they can be further developed to quantify microscale mechanical damage. Recent innovations enable force quantification through intensity-based outputs, ratiometric spectral shifts, multilayer capsule architectures, and rupture threshold engineering. By overcoming the current limitation of damage detection, force-resolved self-reporting materials open new possibilities for smarter, safer, and more durable systems in aerospace and infrastructure.
Particle Surface Roughness as a Design Tool for Colloidal Systems
Hu, Minghan; Hsu, Chiao-Peng; Isa, Lucio (2020)
Langmuir
Control over the surface roughness of colloidal particles offers exciting opportunities to tailor the properties and the processing of a broad range of soft matter systems. Moreover, identifying surface roughness as a design parameter reveals the possibility to connect seemingly distinct phenomena and materials via the role played by roughness effects. In this feature article, we concisely review some approaches to synthesize and characterize rough colloidal particles, with a focus on model spherical colloids. We then discuss the impact that surface roughness has on both the high-shear rheology of dense suspensions and the stabilization of Pickering emulsions. Commenting on developments of our own research, we aim to offer an original perspective for a property-oriented development of colloidal particles that transcends classical divisions between materials and processes toward innovative solutions. © 2020 American Chemical Society.
Co-Electrospun Poly(ε-Caprolactone)/Zein Articular Cartilage Scaffolds
Souza Plath, André; Huber, Stephanie; Alfarano, Serena R.; et al. (2023)
Bioengineering
Osteoarthritis scaffold-based grafts fail because of poor integration with the surrounding soft tissue and inadequate tribological properties. To circumvent this, we propose electrospun poly(ε-caprolactone)/zein-based scaffolds owing to their biomimetic capabilities. The scaffold surfaces were characterized using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, static water contact angles, and profilometry. Scaffold biocompatibility properties were assessed by measuring protein adsorption (Bicinchoninic Acid Assay), cell spreading (stained F-actin), and metabolic activity (PrestoBlue™ Cell Viability Reagent) of primary bovine chondrocytes. The data show that zein surface segregation in the membranes not only completely changed the hydrophobic behavior of the materials, but also increased the cell yield and metabolic activity on the scaffolds. The surface segregation is verified by the infrared peak at 1658 cm−1, along with the presence and increase in N1 content in the survey XPS. This observation could explain the decrease in the water contact angles from 125° to approximately 60° in zein-comprised materials and the decrease in the protein adsorption of both bovine serum albumin and synovial fluid by half. Surface nano roughness in the PCL/zein samples additionally benefited the radial spreading of bovine chondrocytes. This study showed that co-electrospun PCL/zein scaffolds have promising surface and biocompatibility properties for use in articular-tissue-engineering applications.
Multi-Responsive Microrobots Enabled by Chemistry and Materials Design
Hu, Minghan (2025)
Chimia
At the microscale, robotic intelligence cannot rely on circuits or processors; instead, it must emerge directly from responsive materials. Chemistry provides the means: polymers, catalytic and magnetic materials enable single responsive mechanisms such as propulsion and sensing, forming the foundations of physical intelligence. Yet these functions remain limited in isolation. The next step is multiple responsiveness, where combined mechanisms create richer, autonomous behaviours. Conventional monolithic designs often suffer from interference and poor tunability, but modular assembly strategies now offer a solution by integrating discrete functional units without cross-talk. This review traces the progression from single to modular multi-responsive microrobots and highlights how such systems could achieve life-like adaptability for biomedical and environmental applications.
Multi-compartment supracapsules made from nano-containers towards programmable release
Hu, Minghan; Reichholf, Nico; Xia, Yanming; et al. (2022)
Materials Horizons
The assembly of nanomaterials into suprastructures offers the possibility to fabricate larger scale functional materials, whose inner structure strongly influences their functionality for a vast range of applications. In spite of the many current strategies, achieving multi-compartment structures in a targeted and versatile way remains highly challenging. Here, we describe a controllable and straightforward route to create uniform suprastructured materials with a multi-compartmentalized architecture by confining primary nanocapsules into droplets using a cross-junction microfluidic device. Following solvent evaporation from the droplets, the nanocapsules spontaneously assemble into precisely sized multi-compartment particles, which we term supracapsules. Thanks to the process, each spatially separated nanocapsule unit retains its cargo and functionalities within the resulting supracapsules. However, new collective properties emerge, and, particularly, programmable release profiles that are distinct from those of single-compartment capsules. Finally, the suprastructures can be disassembled into single-compartment units by applying ultra-sonication, switching their release to a burst-release mode. These findings open up exciting opportunities to fabricate multi-compartment suprastructures incorporating diverse functionalities for materials with emerging properties.
Intelligent soft matter: towards embodied intelligence
Baulin, Vladimir A.; Giacometti, Achille; Fedosov, Dmitry A.; et al. (2025)
Soft Matter
Intelligent soft matter lies at the intersection of materials science, physics, and cognitive science, promising to change how we design and interact with materials. This transformative field aims to create materials with life-like capabilities, such as perception, learning, memory, and adaptive behavior. Unlike traditional materials, which typically perform static or predefined functions, intelligent soft matter can dynamically interact with its environment, integrating multiple sensory inputs, retaining past experiences, and making decisions to optimize its responses. Inspired by biological systems, these materials leverage the inherent properties of soft matter such as flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to perform functions that mimic cognitive processes. By synthesizing current research trends and projecting their evolution, we present a forward-looking perspective on how intelligent soft matter could be constructed, with the aim of inspiring innovations in areas such as biomedical devices, adaptive robotics, and beyond. We highlight new pathways for integrating sensing, memory and actuation with low-power internal operations, and we discuss key challenges in realizing materials that exhibit truly "intelligent behavior". These approaches outline a path toward more robust, versatile, and scalable materials that can potentially act, compute, and "think" through their inherent intrinsic material properties-moving beyond traditional smart technologies that rely on external control.
Self-Reporting Multiple Microscopic Stresses Through Tunable Microcapsule Arrays
Hu, Minghan; Ma, Zhongqi; Kim, Min-Soo; et al. (2025)
Advanced Materials
Self-reporting materials have emerged as a promising tool for real-time monitoring of stress and damage in structural materials. When critical stress is applied to these materials, an optical response is triggered - for example by dye release, or molecular cleavage. A key challenge is to extend these systems to respond to multiple different stress levels. To achieve this, a novel microcapsule-based assembly strategy is presented. Microfluidic synthesis is used to create microcapsules that release dye at a precise level of applied force. Subsequently, capillary assembly is used to combine microcapsules with different stress-responsiveness and different fluorescent dyes into chains, which are uniformly patterned into regular arrays, and embed these into the self-reporting materials. Through indentation experiments, it is shown that these materials can distinguish and record spatially resolved local stresses based on the fluorescence emitted upon microcapsule rupture. Crucially, the technique's accuracy is significantly improved when microcapsules are spatially organized within the material. This versatile technique can be applied to a range of different materials, via the use of thin coatings containing the regularly patterned microcapsule chains.
Metal/CeO₂−ₓ with regulated heterointerface, interfacial oxygen vacancy and electronic structure for highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction
Yan, Xiaodong; Zhang, Zhe; Xu, Hanwen; et al. (2023)
Applied Surface Science
The high activity of the metal/oxide heterostructures towards hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is generally attributed to the metal-oxide synergy. A comprehensive study is thus needed to definitely unveil the origin of the catalytic activity of the metal/oxide heterostructures. Herein, Ni/CeO₂₋ₓ, Co/CeO₂₋ₓ and NiCo/CeO₂₋ₓ heterostructures are in-situ synthesized by hydrogenation. Both experimental and computational results validate that the presence of Ni favors the formation of interfacial oxygen vacancies, which facilitate the adsorption of H₂O molecules for HER. Theoretical calculations further show that the desorption of OH* is the rate-determining step, and that the desorption barrier of OH* on the NiCo/CeO₂₋ₓ is the lowest because of the NiCo alloying induced regulation in electronic structure. Additionally, the NiCo-CeO₂₋ₓ heterointerface greatly promotes the charge accumulation, leading to the low onset potential. Therefore, the NiCo/CeO₂₋ₓ presents the highest intrinsic activity with a small overpotential of 30 mV at 10 mA cm⁻² in 1.0M KOH.

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Minghan Hu

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