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With the rapid development of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMSs), the demand for glass microstructure is increasing. For the purpose of achieving high quality and stable machining of glass microstructures with a high aspect ratio, ultrasonic vibration is applied into the micro-wire electrochemical discharge machining (WECDM), which is proposed as ultrasonic vibration-assisted WECDM with a micro helical electrode. Firstly, the formation of a gas film on the surface of the helical electrode in WECDM machining is simulated, meaning the thickness of the gas film can be reduced by adding suitable ultrasonic amplitude, thus reducing the critical voltage, then the machining localization and stability were enhanced. Then, the micro helical electrode with a diameter of 100 μm is used to carry out sets of experiments that study the influence of ultrasonic amplitude, machining voltage, duty factor, pulse frequency, and feed rate on the slit width. The experimental results show that the machining stability and quality are significantly improved by adding suitable ultrasonic amplitude. When the amplitude was 5.25 μm, the average slit width was reduced to 128.63 μm with a decrease of 20.78%. Finally, with the optimized machining parameters, micro planar coil structure and microcantilever structure with a high aspect ratio were fabricated successfully on the glass plate. It is proved that ultrasonic vibration-assisted WECDM with the micro helical electrode method can meet the requirements of high aspect ratio microstructure machining for hard and brittle materials.

Hollow Glass Microspheres for Plastics, Elastomers, and Adhesives Compounds brings together, for the first time, all of the practical and theoretical aspects of glass bubble manufacturing, including its properties, processing, and applications, as well as regulatory, environmental, and health and safety aspects.The book enables the reader to.

Recent increasing interest in light guide plates (LGPs) based on the advanced manufacturing towards optoelectronics applications has emerged as a potential technology. The aim of this study was to estimate the optical characteristics on practical verification of laser-engraved glass light guide plate with concave microstructures. The case study can use the industrial ability of picosecond laser (pico-laser) technique, a type of ultrafast laser pulses, to directly engrave a glass sheet (Corning Iris® Glass) with functional concave microstructures for fabricating an LGP. Eight small pieces of samples with array of microstructures engraved on different processing conditions were made for measuring optical characteristics before and after the samples were etched by hydrofluoric acid. Here, the engraved 6-inch LGP structures can make light exit from the LGP uniformly. Additionally, the two optimized LGPs were put in a 7.8-inch backlight module where the measured results showed the uniformity of spatial luminance was 0.9. The study demonstrated the one-step process utilizing pico-laser technique, yielding for the design of microstructures of thinner large-sized liquid crystal display (LCD) products in the manufacturing of LGPs for lighted-up in a backlight unit (BLU).

Carbonization of replicated furan precursors has been proposed as a low-cost large-area method for fabricating microstructured vitreous carbon (VC) molds to glass micromolding. During the carbonization of furan precursors, large anisotropic shrinkage occurs inherently owing to thermal decomposition of the material, and this anisotropic shrinkage should be compensated to obtain the designed profiles of microcavities on the VC mold. In this study, a linear gradual shrinkage ratio model (LGSRM) was developed to predict the anisotropic shrinkage characteristics associated with the fabrication of microstructured VC molds. To verify the shrinkage model, the shape change of the VC mold according to the LGSRM was simulated with ANSYS and compared with the experimental results. To determine the coefficients of LGSRM, a finite element analysis code, in which a gradual shrinkage ratio can be assigned to each individual mesh, was developed, and the coefficients of LGSRM were selected to minimize the errors between the simulated and measured geometrical properties of the VC mold.

Various ancient glass beads in prehistorical - historical period (around 2500-1200 BP) from the collection of the Banraiprachasawan local museum (A. Pisalee, Nakhon Sawan) were studied to determine elemental compositions and morphologies using electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) and scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive x-ray analysis (SEM/EDX). The colors of the beads range from blue to red brown. From the EPMA data, all beads contain copper in the glass matrices. The SEM/EDX showed differences in the microstructures of the glass beads. The transparent blue, greenish blue and light green beads contain small particles of tin oxide while the opaque orange or red brown beads contain both copper oxide and tin oxide particles. The forms of copper oxide in the orange and red brown beads were proposed from previous work: Cu2O in the orange glass and copper metal in the red brown glass.

This chapter contains sections titled: Solid‐State Reactions Microstructure Design Control of Key Properties Methods and Measurements

We report on the super-hydrophobicity and tunable and optical and mechanical properties of transparent HfO 2 (50 nm)/Mo(20 nm)/HfO 2 (50 nm) multilayer films facilitated by engineering the ceramic–metal interface microstructure. A comparative study of nano-columnar and glassy (dense) structured HfO 2 /Mo/HfO 2 multilayer films demonstrate the remarkable effect of interface structure on their hydrophobicity and mechanical properties. The nano-columnar structured multilayer films exhibit the dominance over the glassy structured stack in terms of their enhanced characteristics, namely the mechanical characteristics, anti-reflection behavior, visible transmittance, and hydrophobicity. While hydrophobicity is derived from the combined effect of hierarchical surface roughness and nano-columnar structure of the top and bottom Hf-oxide ceramic layers, the enhanced mechanical response is derived from the columnar structure of Mo metallic interlayer vertically aligned with overall multilayer stack. The combination of super-hydrophobicity and enhanced mechanical properties of optically transparent HfO 2 /Mo/HfO 2 multilayer films through HfO 2 –Mo interface structure control as demonstrated in this work may provide a pathway to further tune the efficiency and in the optimization of architectures for energy-saving applications.

The ability of superhydrophobic surfaces to stay dry, self-clean and avoid biofouling is attractive for applications in biotechnology, medicine and heat transfer 1 – 10 . Water droplets that contact these surfaces must have large apparent contact angles (greater than 150 degrees) and small roll-off angles (less than 10 degrees). This can be realized for surfaces that have low-surface-energy chemistry and micro- or nanoscale surface roughness, minimizing contact between the liquid and the solid surface 11 – 17 . However, rough surfaces—for which only a small fraction of the overall area is in contact with the liquid—experience high local pressures under mechanical load, making them fragile and highly susceptible to abrasion 18 . Additionally, abrasion exposes underlying materials and may change the local nature of the surface from hydrophobic to hydrophilic 19 , resulting in the pinning of water droplets to the surface. It has therefore been assumed that mechanical robustness and water repellency are mutually exclusive surface properties. Here we show that robust superhydrophobicity can be realized by structuring surfaces at two different length scales, with a nanostructure design to provide water repellency and a microstructure design to provide durability. The microstructure is an interconnected surface frame containing ‘pockets’ that house highly water-repellent and mechanically fragile nanostructures. This surface frame acts as ‘armour’, preventing the removal of the nanostructures by abradants that are larger than the frame size. We apply this strategy to various substrates—including silicon, ceramic, metal and transparent glass—and show that the water repellency of the resulting superhydrophobic surfaces is preserved even after abrasion by sandpaper and by a sharp steel blade. We suggest that this transparent, mechanically robust, self-cleaning glass could help to negate the dust-contamination issue that leads to a loss of efficiency in solar cells. Our design strategy could also guide the development of other materials that need to retain effective self-cleaning, anti-fouling or heat-transfer abilities in harsh operating environments. Water-repellent nanostructures are housed within an interconnected microstructure frame to yield mechanically robust superhydrophobic surfaces.

Cellulose is the most abundant polysaccharide on Earth. It can be obtained from a vast number of sources, e.g. cell walls of wood and plants, some species of bacteria, and algae, as well as tunicates, which are the only known cellulose-containing animals. This inherent abundance naturally paves the way for discovering new applications for this versatile material. This review provides an extensive survey on cellulose and its derivatives, their structural and biochemical properties, with an overview of applications in tissue engineering, wound dressing, and drug delivery systems. Based on the available means of selecting the physical features, dimensions, and shapes, cellulose exists in the morphological forms of fiber, microfibril/nanofibril, and micro/nanocrystalline cellulose. These different cellulosic particle types arise due to the inherent diversity among the source of organic materials or due to the specific conditions of biosynthesis and processing that determine the consequent geometry and dimension of cellulosic particles. These different cellulosic particles, as building blocks, produce materials of different microstructures and properties, which are needed for numerous biomedical applications. Despite having great potential for applications in various fields, the extensive use of cellulose has been mainly limited to industrial use, with less early interest towards the biomedical field. Therefore, this review highlights recent developments in the preparation methods of cellulose and its derivatives that create novel properties benefiting appropriate biomedical applications.

Ultrasensitive flexible pressure sensors with excellent linearity are essential for achieving tactile perception. Although microstructured dielectrics have endowed capacitive sensors with ultrahigh sensitivity, the compromise of sensitivity with increasing pressure is an issue yet to be resolved. Herein, a spontaneously wrinkled MWCNT/PDMS dielectric layer is proposed to realize the excellent sensitivity and linearity of capacitive sensors for tactile perception. The synergistic effect of a high dielectric constant and wrinkled microstructures enables the sensor to exhibit linearity up to 21 kPa with a sensitivity of 1.448 kPa−1 and a detection limit of 0.2 Pa. Owing to these merits, the sensor monitors subtle physiological signals such as various arterial pulses and respiration. This sensor is further integrated into a fully multimaterial 3D‐printed soft pneumatic finger to realize material hardness perception. Eight materials with different hardness values are successfully discriminated, and the capacitance of the sensor varies linearly (R2 > 0.975) with increasing hardness. Moreover, the sensitivity to the material hardness can be tuned by controlling the inflation pressure of the soft finger. As a proof of concept, the finger is used to discriminate pork fats with different hardness, paving the way for hardness discrimination in clinical palpation. A capacitive tactile sensor based on a spontaneously wrinkled dielectric layer realizes ultrahigh sensitivity and linearity over a broad sensing range for physiological health monitoring. Furthermore, integrated with a multimaterial 3D‐printed soft pneumatic finger, the sensor achieves linear material hardness perception, and a tunable sensitivity to hardness is also obtained by controlling the inflation pressure of the finger.