Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Imbricate Scales as a Design Construct for Microsystem Technologies


  1. Seok Kim1
  2. Yewang Su2
  3. Agustin Mihi3,
  4. Seungwoo Lee4
  5. Zhuangjian Liu5
  6. Tanmay K. Bhandakkar1
  7. Jian Wu6
  8. Joseph B. Geddes III3
  9. Harley T. Johnson1
  10. Yongwei Zhang5
  11. Jung-Ki Park4
  12. Paul V. Braun3,
  13. Yonggang Huang2
  14. John A. Rogers7,*
Article first published online: 19 DEC 2011


Spatially overlapping plates in tiled configurations represent designs that are observed widely in nature (e.g., fish and snake scales) and man-made systems (e.g., shingled roofs) alike. This imbricate architecture offers fault-tolerant, multifunctional capabilities, in layouts that can provide mechanical flexibility even with full, 100% areal coverages of rigid plates. Here, the realization of such designs in microsystems technologies is presented, using a manufacturing approach that exploits strategies for deterministic materials assembly based on advanced forms of transfer printing. The architectures include heterogeneous combinations of silicon, photonic, and plasmonic scales, in imbricate layouts, anchored at their centers or edges to underlying substrates, ranging from elastomer sheets to silicon wafers. Analytical and computational mechanics modeling reveal distributions of stress and strain induced by deformation, and provide some useful design rules and scaling laws.

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