Fabrication of three dimensional patterns of wide dimensional range using microbes and their applications.
Inspired by the wound healing property of certain trees, we report a novel microbes based additive process for producing three dimensional patterns, which has a potential of engineering applications in a variety of fields. Imposing a two dimensional pattern of microbes on a gel media and allowing them to grow in the third dimension is known from its use in biological studies. Instead, we have introduced an intermediate porous substrate between the gel media and the microbial growth, which enables three dimensional patterns in specific forms that can be lifted off and used in engineering applications. In order to demonstrate the applicability of this idea in a diverse set of areas, two applications are selected. In one, using this method of microbial growth, we have fabricated microlenses for enhanced light extraction in organic light emitting diodes, where densely packed microlenses of the diameters of hundreds of microns lead to luminance increase by a factor of 1.24X. In another entirely different type of application, braille text patterns are prepared on a normal office paper where the grown microbial colonies serve as braille tactile dots. Braille dot patterns thus prepared meet the standard specifications (size and spacing) for braille books.
Department of Materials Science &Engineering and Samtel Center for Display Technologies, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India.
Sunita
S
Mehta
Department of Biological Sciences &Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India.
Saravanan
S
Murugeson
Department of Biological Sciences &Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India.
Balaji
B
Prakash
Department of Materials Science &Engineering and Samtel Center for Display Technologies, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India.
Deepak
D001419:Bacteria / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000378:metabolism; D001766:Blindness; D003470:Culture Media; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D011932:Reading; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology
D003470:Culture Media