Having done so much of the materials research in this country, we need to capitalise on it by creating production-level competencies.
- Bill O'Neill
Are you happy with your smartphone? Professor Bill O’Neill, Director of the Institute for Manufacturing’s (IfM) Centre for Industrial Photonics, isn’t. He’s looking ahead to the next generation of ‘personal assistants’ that will monitor your heart rate, tell you how much alcohol you have in your bloodstream or give you a complete check-up by analysing the chemistry of your sweat.
This phone will have a whole array of miniature sensors and microprocessors embedded in it derived from the latest breakthroughs in microelectromechanical systems technology. But to make devices like these requires extraordinary levels of precision – the ability to manufacture intricate features that are smaller than 100 nanometres.
Diagnostic smartphones are just one example of the new kinds of products that are going to need ultra precision manufacturing. The emergence of polymer or carbon-based semiconductor materials like graphene is driving research and development in areas such as the production of lower cost, more efficient solar cells and ‘printed electronics’ that can be used for flexible display screens and smart labelling. But, for these devices to become reality, companies are going to need a whole new set of production capabilities. The ultra precision research carried out by O’Neill and his team at the IfM is focused on building these kinds of machines and developing the associated systems and processes that can make things at nano levels of precision.
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Image Ultrafast laser etching of glass for microfluidic systems
Credit: Jack Bamford
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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