Beyond Wrinkles: Multimodal Surface Instability for Multifunctional Patterning
Qiming Wang, Xuanhe Zhao
Email: qimingw [at] usc.edu, zhaox [at] mit.edu
Abstract: Biological surfaces display fascinating topographic patterns such as corrugated blood cells and wrinkled dog skin. These patterns have inspired an emerging technology in materials science and engineering to create self-organized surface patterns by harnessing mechanical instabilities. Compared with patterns generated by conventional lithography, surface instability patterns are low-cost, are easy to fabricate, and can be dynamically controlled by tuning various physical stimuli—offering new opportunities in materials and device engineering across multiple length scales. This article provides a systematic review on the fundamental mechanisms and innovative functions of surface instability patterns by categorizing various modes of instabilities into a quantitatively defined thermodynamic phase diagram, and by highlighting their engineering and biological applications.
MRS Bulletin, 41, 115-122 (2016).
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