Tailoring the wrinkle pattern of a microstructured membrane

Abstract

The realization of controllable wrinkle pattern on a thin membrane is of great importance to micro/nanoengineering and aerospace engineering. Here, we report a straightforward method that achieves this outcome by introducing simple microstructures such as holes into the membrane. For a two-end clamped stretched membrane, the presence of holes redistributes stress field in the membrane, therefore monitors the buckling mode and wrinkle pattern of the membrane. Experiment, numerical simulation, and analytical model are provided to quantify this idea, and several wrinkle patterns are demonstrated. The results can provide insightful ideas to understand wrinkling phenomenon of microstructured membranes and to tailor wrinkle patterns used in various disciplines such as membrane manufacturing, cell differentiation, and film antenna in aerospace engineering.

Materials and Structures toward Soft Electronics

“…Spatial distribution of wave/wrinkle structures can be controlled by inducing non‐uniform strain in the substrate. The non‐uniform strain can be formed by substrate relief structures via micromolding or patterned photopolymerization . For example, a customized wrinkle design was realized by precisely controlling ridge‐guiding structures of the substrate .…”

Effect of interlayer sliding on the estimation of elastic modulus of multilayer graphene in nanoindentation simulation

“…Here we start from the normal stress in the transverse direction (σ y ) of a two-end clamped membrane with only one rigid element at the center to explain the effect of rigid element on stress distribution. For the two-end clamped membrane with one rigid element under stretching, the stress field is proposed to be approximately described by the superposition of two parts: the membrane under uniform tension and under four concentrated forces at the corners of the membrane [15]. We further neglect the rigid element in the model of the membrane under four concentrated forces as shown in fig.…”

“…The study of controllable wrinkle patterns of soft material systems provides both fundamental insights and practical guidance for engineering design. Though the membranes used in practice are usually heterogeneous [3,12,[14][15][16][17][18], such as the flexible electronics with rigid circuits [3,16] or the aerospace membrane antenna with electronic elements [12], most of the efforts focus on the wrinkling of uniform membranes [7][8][9][10][11][19][20][21][22], and the influence of heterogeneous materials on the wrinkle pattern has not received much attentions [12,[14][15][16][17][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Here we focus on a two-end clamped membrane with square rigid elements under stretching to study the wrinkling of the heterogeneous membrane.…”

“…1. According to the previous works about the wrinkling of a stretched uniform membrane with clamped ends [7,15,19,20], the sineshape wrinkles are parallel to the loading direction in the central region of the membrane due to the Poisson effect. In comparison, the heterogeneous membranes under stretching display several different kinds of wrinkle patterns, shown in fig.…”

Reversible Surface Patterning by Dynamic Crosslink Gradients: Controlling Buckling in 2D

“…To relieve the compressive stress, the more rigid layer (typically a surface layer) wrinkles or buckles into a random pattern with no preferential order. Controlling these surface instabilities to achieve ordered patterning of the wrinkles represents a significant experimental and theoretical challenge, but would open up a number of interesting applications . By using a bas‐relief‐patterned substrate or a patterned mold/stamp as a template, locally ordered patterning can be obtained by a physical confinement effect .…”