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School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science

Shrink Polymer Sensors: Manufacturing from Micro to Nano

When: Tuesday, December 10, 2024, 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Where: In-person: Graduate Centre GC205 + Online , Mile End campus

Speaker: Dr. Tianhong Cui

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Polymer shrinkage becomes a new approach to do lithography and generate smaller structures by reforming larger pre-patterned structures. 

The facile polymer fabrication approach by embossing and thermoplastic shrinkage aims to do lithography in a nanoscale or reduce the feature size and dramatically increase the aspect ratio of imprinted microstructures. The shrinkage capability of 
embossed microstructures is obtained by molding at low temperatures for less cycle time. Embossed patterns are activated for shrinkage by removing projected structures and heating at higher temperatures. The final structures are defined with the shape of removed materials before shrinking polymer materials. Both two- and three-dimensional embossed structures were successfully shrunk into much smaller scale. This polymer-shrinking process brings a new way to extend the fabrication capability of polymer embossing process towards MEMS-based biosensors. This talk will present shrink polymer for nanolithography, high-aspect-ratio microstructures, and biosensors for medical applications and water pollutants detection. By the end of the talk, the vision of sustainability of manufacturing in micro and nano scales will be covered.

About the speaker: Dr. Tianhong Cui is currently a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota. He is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering and an Affiliate Senior Member of the graduate faculty in Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. He is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is a Global Chair Visiting Professor at the University of Bath, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and an Adjunct Professor at Mayo Clinic. He is a Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME). He was a Laureate of Blaise Pascal Chair for Excellence through École Normale Supérieure in France, and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK. He is serving as an Executive Editor-in-Chief for the first engineering journal of Nature, Microsystems & Nanoengineering, and is an Editor-in-Chief for the first AAAS/Science Partner Journal, Research. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of another Nature journal, Light: Science & Applications.

Key contact: Yang Hao

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