PhD position Origami-based Flexible Architected Materials for High-Tech Equipment

The semiconductor industry expectations for lithography machine performance demand ever-increasing capabilities, such as throughput, lifetime, cleanliness, sustainability, and precision for mechatronic systems. One of the key construction elements in high-tech mechatronic systems is flexible (i.e. compliant) mechanisms. Unlike their rigid-body counterparts, they allow motion in the desired directions enabled by their slender parts which deform elastically. Due to their monolithic nature, cleanliness, and predictability, they are desired in precision applications. Despite these advantages, flexible mechanisms are one of the main road blockers for high-tech mechatronic systems to achieve higher throughput, i.e. higher process speed and acceleration. This is due to their inherent drawbacks such as limited range of motion for a given design volume and low load bearing capacity (i.e. support stiffness).

In contrast, during the past two decades, flexible architected materials offer opportunities for developing elastic materials with tunable mechanical properties in unprecedented ways. These materials achieve their properties from their internal geometries, rather than only from their chemical composition. The goal of this project is to investigate the potential of using origami-based flexible architected materials for application in high-tech mechatronic systems.

In this project, you will study and develop: (1) kinematic synthesis methods for origami-based flexible architected materials, and (2) strategies for a proper stress distribution along origami crease patterns. The research includes both design and modelling, and also performing experiments.

This project operates on the frontiers of science to address an industrial need and will prepare you well for a career in academia and industry.

Our research team focuses on the development and understanding of flexible architected materials, including origami-based, instability-based, and mechanism-based architected materials. Besides developing fundamental understanding, we demonstrate applications of flexible mechanisms and architected materials in Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), Soft Robotics, Medical Devices, Mechatronic Systems, and Precision Systems.

This team is part of the Department of Precision and Microsystems Engineering (PME) of the faculty of Mechanical, Maritime, and Materials Engineering (3mE) of Delft University of Technology. Our department is well equipped with state-of-the-art fabrication facilities and experimental equipment.

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