Abstract:

Carbon microelectromechanical system (carbon MEMS) has emerged as a technique alternative to silicon-based MEMS technologies in the last two decades. Although carbon-MEMS allows for the fabrication of 3D carbon microstructures useful for several applications, complex architectures are still a major challenge. This presentation will discuss new curious ways to fabricate architectures of carbonaceous materials in different length scales. These techniques are patterning of functionalized biopolymer sheets, electrospinning, and 3D printing. Patterning of biopolymer sheets leads to a facile fabrication mechanism for obtaining 3D complex architectures of cellular carbonaceous materials, which exhibit high load carrying capabilities at a low density. This talk will discuss how the electrospun carbon nanofibers facilitate the patterning of nanostructures of different metal oxides, which are promising for several applications, including sensors and UV detectors. In this presentation, I will emphasize microstereolithographic 3D printing for fabricating 3D complex microarchitectures of glassy carbon, which exhibit excellent results in developing customizable tissue engineering scaffolds. The microstereolithographic approach further leads to the fabrication of 4D shape-morphing carbon architectures, which are currently being investigated for the eventual development of engineered living carbon materials.