Lab Description

Nature produces materials and structures with a rich range of functionality, length scales, and materials. Typically, these are made as intricately structured composites. Often, they utilize a distributed fabrication process that is responsive to the environment to provide custom solutions that meet the specific operational environment. After use, they are readily recycled into new components.

In contrast, man-made structures primarily rely on the integration of static components each composed of a relatively uniform material. These components are assembled together to make a single product with limited ability to respond to changing use requirements. Component design typically favors ease of manufacture using traditional methods rather than efficiency of material usage. It is typically very difficult to recycle the components efficiently at end of life.

These differences highlight tremendous opportunities to improve our manufacturing, but the path to tomorrow’s processes requires a number of smaller steps in the present.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) –commonly known as 3D Printing—provides some of these new capabilities with the capacity to create complex organic shapes with highly customized geometries. This opens the door to optimizing structures for improved performance. We are working to advance these existing methods as well as taking steps towards additional bio-inspired functionality. For example, we are interested in processes that integrate multiple materials and ones that can adapt their structure during use to better achieve the application requirements.

However, there are many technologies that contribute to our vision for the future from microfluidics to online process monitoring. We tackle any technology where we can make a contribution.