 with two gold petals and four polymer petals.
“This opens the door to the creation of high quality electronic devices,” says Gracias. But questions remain about the strength of the sticking points anchoring the structures down. “Would this adhesion be sufficient to be used in a realistic setting?” asks Garcia. “This is a key issue that needs more vetting.”
So far Zhang and his team have created and tested a simple 3D induction coil, which performed exactly as predicted.
Pop-up Intel chips are still a way off, but the researchers are already working on real-world devices, including a new kind of bioreactor that uses pop-up 3D electrodes to guide and monitor the growth of cells in the lab. They are also developing implantable electronic devices, such as biomedical sensors, that use bendy, stretchy, pop-up helical wires that can conform to the body’s movement.
“The pop-up technique will expand what is possible,” says Huang.