Innovative Multifunctional Concepts Enabled by Novel Fabrication Strategies.

摘要

Often design, materials and fabrication development are pursued as successive steps in a technology implementation cycle. This stymies a concurrent thinking approach that would allow an integrated strategy where various stages of the technology development life cycle are concurrently considered. This is particularly true for multifunctional systems where new architectures must be considered within the constraints of design, materials and manufacturing. We propose a new strategy in multi-functionality by incorporating electro-magnetics and sensor components directly on large passive load bearing structural surfaces without structural or profile debits. This approach based on mesoscale multilayer surface engineering has recently been enabled through the development of conformal, low temperature direct write technologies for both patterning and 2D engineering of multilayer circuit architectures. The advantage of this approach is that the structure itself is not compromised and the available passive regions are utilized. Furthermore the developed approaches can be incorporated into various substrate materials (metals and composites) and thus can be transitioned to both new and legacy DoD platforms. This paper discusses the proposed methodology for multifunctional material integration using layered and through-thickness-controlled device architecture and compositions. This will provide surface-engineered systems with appropriate embedded interconnect and wiring strategies. Initial examples of concepts for integration of structural capacitors and sensors will be discussed.