A doctoral student at the University of Twente proposes to vouwtechnieken to use in the making of micro-electronics. This would be three-dimensional designs at the micro level to achieve. He was inspired by the Japanese paper folding art Origami.
Currently, applications of micro-electronics, especially, two-dimensional, though more and more technologiefabrikanten about on three-dimensional designs, such as stacked memory and 3d transistors. In addition to the benefits as a smaller size, there may be other benefits to 3d design using, for example, for a more efficient layout. According to Antoine Legrain, doctoral student at the University of Twente, is folding one of the most elegant ways to 3d-structures.
In his thesis he argues that the techniques of the Japanese paper folding art of Origami can be applied for electronics and mechanics on the macro – but also at the micro level. For the latter, he demonstrated this with structures with a diameter of 0.2 millimeters. “I use the surface tension of liquids for the folding of microstructures,” says Legrain. “We do this by small droplets of water to evaporate. The droplets are applied to flexible structures, which consequently collapse. If we are the good design, remains after the evaporation, the structure folded due to parts sticking together.”
The application of the drops is done with a hypodermic needle, which is an obstacle for large-scale production. Managed Legrain, however, also drops by a microkanaal on the folding structure. This method would be more perspective for mass production. In addition, he managed to a container with thousands of ribbons to immerse in water and leave it dry, to put them in one time to fold.
This would be of interest in the investigation of the electrical connections to the movable parts. “We think that it is possible in the same way, more complex structures to fold, but this still requires a lot of follow-up study”, decision Legrain. His thesis is called “Elastocapillary Self-folding of micro-machined Structures, capillary Origami,” and he conducted his phd research at the TU Delft, faculty of EEMCS and the group Transducers Science and Technology of the MESA+institute for nanotechnology of the University of Twente.
MIT researchers are also doing research into the bending of materials for mems hardware. They make use of structural tensions in silica, which occur as the material is processed. Using an algorithm that calculated the researchers, the mechanical tension necessary for the desired shape bending of the structures.
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