At the University of Louisville J. B. Speed School of Engineering
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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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 …
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 …
Continue reading “Paper published: beams on flexible supports”
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 …
Here is the latest iteration of the macro bistable actuator. We inflated two air pockets to make this 3-D printed plastic beam contort into an S-shape; this shape is an important step on the way to “snap-through” of our small and large bistable beams. The work continues Fidel Tewolde’s earlier project and makes good use …
Continue reading “Inflatable actuator with two stable states”
