Contact: Eric Mankin Scientists fold up shapes, just like kidsExcept these are shapes you can't see except in a microscope
Scientists working at the University of Southern California are making tiny fold-up structures that might someday be used to deliver tiny doses of drugs. The researchers first create flat patterns, origami, of exactly the fold up shapes familiar to kindergarten children making paper pyramids, cubes or other solids. But these are much smaller: as little as small 40 micrometers on a side. (1 inch = 25,400 micrometers) Instead of paper, the patterns are made of a material called polysilicon sitting on top of a thin film of gold. Then the scientists made hinges for folding in the shape, but etching the polysilicon away at the places they wanted to fold, leaving only the gold. The shapes are much too small to touch, so scientists first treated the sides to make them magnetic, and then used magnets to make the folds. For the final seal-up, the researchers dropped the shapes into water. As the water dried, it created forces on the edges of the polysilicon that made them snap together. "Our experiments show" says the paper, that "the combination of partial folding of structures by magnetic actuation and liquid closure to bring the structures to their final closed state is an extremely promising technique for mass production of large arrays of micrometer size voxels. Furthermore, we believe that future optimization of the voxel hinge geometry and composition should allow for extensions of our work to much smaller voxels." Can you fold up some of the shapes you see in the pictures?
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