Publications de Alexandre Poulin

Printed Humidity Sensors from Renewable and Biodegradable Materials

Alexandre Poulin, Danick Briand, Xavier Aeby, James Alec Pierce Bourely

Wiley2022

High-speed mechano-active multielectrode array for investigating rapid stretch effects on cardiac tissue

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin, Christian Dellenbach, Matthias Imboden, Etienne de Coulon, Stephan Rohr

Systematic investigations of the effects of mechano-electric coupling (MEC) on cellular cardiac electrophysiology lack experimental systems suitable to subject tissues to in-vivo like strain patterns while simultaneously reporting changes in electrical act ...

Nature Research2019

Taming the viscoelastic creep of dielectric elastomer actuators

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin

We present a simple open-loop method to suppress the viscoelastic drift of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs). Viscoelastic creep is one of the drawbacks of DEAs, especially when made with acrylic elastomer membranes (VHB). This leads to a time-dependen ...

SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING2019

Integrated elastomer-based device for measuring the mechanics of adherent cell monolayers

Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin, Cristina Martin Olmos, Francesca Sorba

Cells in the body collectively sustain mechanical deformations in almost all physiological functions. From the morphogenesis stage, cells' ability to sustain stress is essential for the body's well-being. Several pathologies have been associated with abnor ...

2019

An open-loop control scheme to increase the speed and reduce the viscoelastic drift of dielectric elastomer actuators

Samuel Rosset, Alexandre Poulin

We present a simple open-loop method to increase the response speed and suppress the viscoelastic creep of dielectric elastomer actuators. The parameters of the model can be extracted from two simple measurements: a strain vs. voltage ramp, and the strain ...

2019

The NERD setup: assessing the life time of electrodes for dielectric elastomer transducers

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin, Samuel Schlatter, Christine Anne de Saint-Aubin

2018

An ultra-fast mechanically active cell culture substrate

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin, Cristina Martin Olmos, Francesca Sorba, Matthias Imboden

We present a mechanically active cell culture substrate that produces complex strain patterns and generates extremely high strain rates. The transparent miniaturized cell stretcher is compatible with live cell microscopy and provides a very compact and por ...

Nature Research2018

Assessing the degradation of compliant electrodes for soft actuators

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin, Christine Anne de Saint-Aubin

We present an automated system to measure the degradation of compliant electrodes used in dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) over millions of cycles. Electrodes for DEAs generally experience biaxial linear strains of more than 10%. The decrease in elect ...

American Institute of Physics2017

Flexible Zinc-Tin Oxide Thin Film Transistors Operating at 1 kV for Integrated Switching of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators Arrays

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin, Nadine Besse, Danick Briand, Alexis Pierre Henri Marette

Flexible high-voltage thin- lm transistors (HVTFTs) operating at more than 1 kV are integrated with compliant dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA) to create a exible array of 16 independent actuators. To allow for high-voltage operation, the HVTFT implemen ...

Wiley-Blackwell2017

Optimization of thin-film highly-compliant elastomer sensors for contractility measurement of muscle cells

Samuel Rosset, Mélanie Favre, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin, Cristina Martin Olmos, Oluwaseun Adelowo Araromi, Francesca Sorba, Matthias Imboden

Test assays capable of providing quantitative characterization of the contraction of cardiac and smooth muscle cells are of great need for drug development and screening. Several methodologies have been proposed for achieving measurement of cell contractil ...

Elsevier Science Bv2016

Dielectric Elastomer Actuator for Mechanical Loading of 2D Cell Cultures

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin

We demonstrate the use of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) for mechanical stimulation of cells in vitro. The development of living tissues is regulated by their mechanical environment through the modification of fundamental cellular functions such as ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2016

Miniaturized Dielectric Elastomer Actuator for Mechanical Stimulation of Monolayer Cell Cultures

Alexandre Poulin

This thesis advances the field of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) through the development of device designs, fabrication processes, strain characterization technique and modelling tool. It provides the first demonstration that DEAs can be interfaced ...

EPFL2016

Printing low-voltage dielectric elastomer actuators

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Alexandre Poulin

We demonstrate the fabrication of fully printed thin dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs), reducing the operation voltage below 300V while keeping good actuation strain. DEAs are soft actuators capable of strains greater than 100% and response times below ...

AIP American Institute of Physics2015

MEMS Tunable Asymmetric Fabry-Perot Cavity for High-Precision Weighing of Macro Samples

Luc Thévenaz, Yves-Alain Peter, Alexandre Poulin

We propose a microelectromechanical systems-based tunable asymmetric Fabry-Perot cavity for the high-precision weighing of macro samples. The device is based on an in-plane design and is structured in a silicon-on-insulator substrate. The cavity length of ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2013