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MIT researchers have unveiled shape-changing thin-film interfaces.
The scientists at the MIT Tangible Media Group combined the thermoelectric characteristics of copper with thermally sensitive polyethylene, creating thin-film, flexible circuit composites that can actuate and change their shapes.
The thin-film technology, which the researchers dubbed UniMorph, starts with designing a digital model of the pattern in CadSoft EAGLE or Adobe Illustrator, and then using a standard printer, copper etching, hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid to fabricate the structure.
The substrate is made of plastic polyethylene at the base, and Kapton on top. The uniMorph composite allows the embedding of additional electronics such as sensors, LEDs and MCUs.
When the substrate heats up, the two materials expand at different rates, allowing the bottom layer to pull up the edges of the top, creating a curling effect.
While simply heating the uniMorph with a heat source like a light bulb or the sun can create simple shape transformations, the researchers also designed resistive heating patterns into the flexible circuit, allowing the uniMorph to perform more complex and active shape actuation.
With uniMorph capable of bending, curling, twisting and opening, the potential is there for transformative user interfaces, such as eBooks which detect when the user is nearby and curls open.
The researchers programmed their example applications into Arduino, and the uniMorphs run on custom Arduino compatible boards. In some cases, they designed the flexible circuits so the Arduino microchips could be soldered right on top of them.