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New Scientist TV:

Pulse of light creates instant origami

Jacob Aron, technology reporter

Too lazy to learn origami? Now you can sit back and let heat do the work, thanks to a new technique developed by Michael Dickey and his team at North Carolina State University that uses a material that can fold up on its own.

The researchers used plastic sheets that shrink when placed under a heat source such as infrared light. Using an ordinary inkjet printer, they printed black ink along the lines to be folded. Since black absorbs more energy than paler colours, the lines first shrink more than the surrounding material and then fold when subjected to light. Increasing the width of the line increases the angle of the fold, making it possible to produce a range of shapes.

It's not the first self-folding technique. Last year, researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology used "shape memory" alloy foil and flexible silicon rubber to create a material that folds into a previously-held shape when heated. However, the new method should be more useful as it can be integrated with existing commercial printing techniques.

Journal reference: Soft Matter, DOI: 10.1039/C1SM06564E

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I think it is interesting, but what is the point of it? I can see 3D printing and its uses, but what do you do with this technology?


@Preposterous: That's what they said about the laser... get imagining!


I didn't need to read the explanation to see how this worked... similarly so I can imagine such automated construction (particularly if you used plastics?) working in areas hit by natural disasters. These places often have high levels of light due to their environment (not many tidal waves and earthquakes going on in Norway in the dark depths of winter) such as the Pacific Rim. Temporary accommodation could most certainly be an option if you calculate the necessary absorbency along the joints to unveil large plastic homes that would construct themselves in short times, simultaneously. I will be investigating this in my own free time as an architectural student (although not under controlled laboratory conditions, of course... but hey... nature never is controlled, is it?)


J., good luck, when you work that out get in touch with Cameron Sinclair/Architecture for Humanity. Check out his shelter solutions in 'design like you give a damn.'


This has uses in the printing and packaging indusatries so instead of expensive machines to do folding. you can pass it by an infared lamp to do the work money saving perocess


Well, not really. If the self-shaping material was say a square and one could project light at various frequencies and the material would assume different shapes on its own, then it might be a sort of self-shaping origami. This material was merely pre-cut to assume a certain shape under light, or probably heat. Nice, but no big deal.

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