Day: May 10, 2020

A senior design team (Jonathan Rajcula (Team Lead), Nicholas Bougler (Design Lead), Max Armbruster
(Fabrication Lead), Daniel Dell’Anno (Analysis Lead), Jiacheng Xing (Evaluation Lead)) worked with the UMass Amherst Intelligent Sensing Lab on engineering a device to manufacture high quality micropatterned PDMS stamps in 2019 Fall semester and 2020 Spring semester. These stamps are to be used on a roll to roll microprinting machine being developed in the Intelligent Sensing Lab, which will utilize the stamps in fabricating flexible circuitry. The objectives of the project are to: 1) Learn the process of PDMS stamps and create a stamp compatible with the lab’s Roll to Roll Fabrication Machine. 2) Search for an appropriate material compatible with CO2 laser-etching serving as the PDMS mold. 3) Design and to improve a metal housing that holds the mold piece. 4) Find a sufficient method to evaluate the quality of the final prototype. 5) Measure the elastic modulus of the PDMS stamp, combining all of the tested results and anticipating an efficient modulus model that works properly with the project. The team has came up with a method to efficiently create patterns on a PDMS stamp by preprocessing a mold with patterns. Specifically, the mold is assembled with three parts, a two piece aluminum housing and an acrylic die. The team has done multiple experiments and has confirmed that acrylic is the material compatible with the CO2 laser-etching machine. With a series of incoming issues (housing leakage, flatness/thickness of the PDMS stamp), the team redesigned a new aluminum housing and improved its functions on dealing with mentioned issues. Some footage of the team doing work in the lab is reported in https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lisa-dell-anno-esq-706a95a5_daniel-dellanno-20-wasnt-planning-on-attending-activity-6615285033106231296-W4vk/.