Chemical origami: printing 3D designs

from PhysicsWeb,

Israeli scientists have created a technique of converting flat discs into three-dimensional structures. They apply a monomer solution to the surface of the disc that shrinks when heated, so that the disc buckles to make certain shapes.

Eran Sharon and colleagues from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have now done just that by calculating a "metric" – a tensor that characterizes how local distances ought to vary over a surface when activated. Using this metric as a blueprint, the physicists applied the monomer solution N-isopropylacrylamide (i.e. the stimulus) in varying spatial concentration over the surface of the disc. When the disc was then heated over 33 °C, the regions of higher concentration shrunk more (in other words, local distance was reduced) and hence created deeper bends under the resultant stress.

Sharon's team created a range of structures varying in complexity, from slightly wavy crisp-like objects to those that look like a sombrero. Randall Kamien, a physicist from the University of Pennsylvania, told Physics Web that the technique could be used in the engineering of prototypes. "You could imagine a printer that prints a metric into a flat sheet, which you heat, and it forms the desired 3D object," he said.

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