A team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS
The device is printed onIn a 3D printer, a plastic rectangle the size of a cartridge for old video consoles. The internal parts of the device consist of intersecting channels. Each of them has wide and narrow sections, and the walls are made of a hydrophilic material that attracts water.
Microscopic weaving technology. Video: the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS)
Researchers have shown that if placed inchannel the plastic float and immerse the device in water, then the surface tension of water from the walls will repel it. If the float was in a narrow section of the channel, it moved to a wide section, where it could float as far from the walls as possible.
The researchers then attached microscopicfibers to floats. When the water level changed and the floats moved to the left or right in the channels, the fibers twisted around each other. By adding a third fiber float and designing a series of channels, the researchers were able to weave micrometer-sized fibers of the synthetic material Kevlar into a braid. The finished "yarn" resembles an ordinary braid, but each thread is 10 times thinner than a human hair.
The next generation of phones and cordlessdevices will need new antennas to access higher and higher bands, the authors say. For devices that operate at frequencies of tens of GHz, threads with a diameter of about 1 micron are needed. Scaling up the proposed technology offers a cheap solution to this problem, the scientists say.
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Cover image: Manoharan Lab, Harvard SEAS