研究発表

Tactile displays mechanically stimulate tactile receptors on a finger pad. They require a micro-actuator array capable of generating displacement greater than 100 μm. We propose a MEMS-based tactile display with hydraulic displacement amplification mechanisms (HDAM). HDAM contains micro-cavities that have different cross-sectional areas between at the contact and the drive parts and encapsulate incompressive glycerin with largely-deformable thin PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) membranes. Displacement applied to the drive part is amplified at the contact part associated with the ratio of cross-sectional areas of the drive to the contact parts. HDAM was fabricated and achieved a seven-fold of amplification. We successfully demonstrated rewritable Braille codes.

We demonstrate enhancement of fluorescent signals in close proximity to silver nanoparticles manufactured by the modified silver mirror reaction. The manufactur-ing process is bottom-up, non-vacuum, and completed in only 15 minutes, and thus, is differentiated from other deposition processes of metal nanoparticles. We have ex-tended the process to manufacture submicron silver nano-islands composed of nanoparticles using micro-contact-printing of SAM. The fluorescent signals of rho-damin-6G was enhanced by a factor of 5 on the silver nano-islands substrate.