The upper plot in this video shows the “basins of attraction” for a bistable compressed beam as you bend its support angle from flat (0 degrees) to about 18 degrees. This beam is about 4% too large to fit in its assigned area, so the center pops up or down. From our earlier work we …
Author Archives: cindy.harnett@louisville.edu
Calculate your spin speed for SU-8 photoresist
Dragging an ancient, stained cleanroom notebook around (NO DRINKING COFFEE IN THE LAB!) or constantly digging up the MicroChem SU-8 datasheets to calculate your SU-8 spin speed? Check out our SU-8 Spin Calc. SU-8 is a thick photoresist often used for making molds for microfluidic devices. Since the photoresist is part of the final structure, …
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Makerspace Co-op featured at NSF website
Our co-op Makership program was just featured at the National Science Foundation (NSF) website in an article discussing NSF’s involvement with the “Maker” movement. During 2012-2013, in a collaboration with Dr. Thomas Tretter in the College of Education and Human Development, we had 9 University of Louisville undergraduate engineering students carry out their semester-long …
Paper published: beams on flexible supports
Here is our analysis of bistable beams on flexible supports, written up. The take-home message is that when the support is flat, the beam has two states, up or down. But when you bend the support too far, the beam is only stable in one of the positions. Connect up a readout system to these …
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Nanoparticles are boring…
Nanoparticles are boring SQUARE HOLES in our silicon wafers! The gold nanoplates from the O’Toole group enhance the etch rate in our usual silicon-etching process. Mysterious square pores appear when nanoparticles are present on the silicon. Others have made conical nanopores in a different etch chemistry and with different gold nanoparticles, and used them as …