Smart (shrink manufacturing advanced research tools)

The challenge of micro- and nano-fabrication lies in the difficulties and costs associated with patterning at such high resolution. To make such promising technology - which could enable pervasive health monitoring and disease detection/surveillance - more accessible and pervasive, there is a critical need to develop a manufacturing approach such that prototypes as well as complete manufactured devices cost only pennies. To accomplish this, instead of relying on traditional fabrication techniques largely inherited from the semiconductor industry, we have pioneered a radically different approach. Leveraging the inherent heat-induced relaxation of pre-stressed thermoplastic sheets - commodity shrink-wrap film - we pattern in a variety of ways at the large scale and achieve our desired structures by controlled shrinking down to 5% of the original, patterned sizes.