Teng Li's blog

The following entry was first posted in www.macroelectronics.org on 8 May 2006.

Flat-panel displays are rapidly replacing cathode-ray tubes as the monitors of choice for computers and televisions, a commercial success that has opened the era of macroelectronics, in which transistors and other micro-components are integrated over large areas. In addition to the flat-panel displays, other macroelectronic products include x-ray imagers, thin-film solar cells, and thin-film antennas.
Like a microelectronic product, a macroelectronic product consists of many thin-film components of small features. While microelectronics advances by miniaturizing features, macroelectronics does so by enlarging systems. Macroelectronic products today are mostly fabricated on substrates of glass or silicon; they are expensive, fragile and not readily portable when their areas are large. To reduce cost and enhance portability, future innovation will come from new choice of materials and of manufacturing processes. For example, thin-film devices on thin polymer substrates lend themselves to roll-to-roll fabrication, resulting in lightweight, rugged and flexible products. These macroelectronic products will have diverse architectures, hybrid materials, and small features. Their mechanical behavior during manufacturing and use poses significant challenges to the creation of the new technologies.

A recent review paper by Suo et al. describes ongoing work in the emerging field of research – mechanics of flexible macroelectronics, with emphasis on the mechanical behavior at the scale of individual features, and over a long time. The following topics have been discussed in the paper:

Sometimes a video can be more convenient and effective than words on delivering a message. Now you can embed videos in your post in iMechanica. As a demonstration, I first embed a video below I made previously on how to make hyperlinks in your post. If you're interested in posting a video in iMechanica, read the following instructions:

How to embed a video in your post?
Step 1: Sign up a free account at YouTube.com, a website you can share videos online. Upon sign up, you can upload videos to YouTube. Follow the easy directions there. Of course you may want to read copyright tips of YouTube before uploading.
Step 2: Once uploaded, your video will have a Unique URL. You can always provide a hyperlink of the video in your post. To directly embed the video into a post, you need to use the html code automatically generated by YouTube, which you can easily find below the unique URL in the video information. Copy the entire html code.
Step 3: Since the current setting of the default text editor of iMechanica (those MS-word-type buttons above the textbox, called TinyMCE) does not support video yet, you need to turn it off and just use plain html. To turn off TinyMCE, click "my account" on the left sidebar, then click "edit" tab. Below "Account information" box, find "TinyMCE rich-text settings" and click it to expand the box. In the Default state, it shows "true" (means TinyMCE is on). Click the drop-down list and choose "false" . Scroll down to the bottom and click "Submit". Now TinyMCE is turned off.
Step 4: Start to post a new entry. Now you should see a Body textbox without any buttons. Paste the YouTube html code into the box. You can add any description above or below the code. If you want, you can also use any html editor to prepare your post and copy/paste the entire html file into the box.
Step 5: Preview your post then submit. Now all iMech users can view your video without leaving your post!
Of course, you can always turn TinyMCE back on by repeating Step 3.
We're still improving the video function in iMechanica. If you have any creative ideas to better achieve such a function, welcome to leave your comment below.
Enjoy vlogging in iMech.

Finding an academic job is like finding a perfect match. Universities advertise openings, you choose a list of places to apply. Nowadays an opening can easily attract hundreds of applicants, of which several are invited for on-campus interview. When the whole process is over, there might be a perfect match between you and a department (Congratulations!), while sometimes there is not.

In a recent post, Zhigang Suo explains how to add hyperlinks in your post. We all understand how hard to write an instruction for a simple operation, so we should appreciate Dr. Suo's every effort trying to be elucidative.

If you prefer a visualized instruction, click here to watch a video demonstration on how to make a post in your blog at iMechanica, and how to add a hyperlink in your post.

The nanoHUB is a web-based initiative spearheaded by the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN). Based at Purdue University and partnered by eight other universities, nanoHUB provides a web interface to numerous resources relevant to students and practitioners in nanotechnology. The cyber environment includes online courses and tutorials, proceedings of seminars, collaborative tools, and an interface for online simulation.

For example, you can view research seminars on nanoHUB through online slideshow with audio, powered by Breeze technology. You can go over the outline of the seminar, choose thumbnail views of the slides and even search text within the titles of the slides, then locate the content of interest and save some time. Another type of resource on nanoHUB is the online simulation tools, which run realtime on nanoHUB. No installation is needed.

The nanoHUB resources are open to public for free. You just need to register to use. In the last eight months, nanoHUB has served more than 10,000 users, with about 60,000 simulation jobs run and more than 10,000 videos viewed. The web server hits of nanoHUB reach 1 million in May 2006.