materialsscienceandengineering:

Specially prepared paper can bend, fold or flatten on command

One of the oldest, most versatile and inexpensive of materials – paper – seemingly springs to life, bending, folding or flattening itself, by means of a low-cost actuation technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

A thin layer of conducting thermoplastic, applied to common paper with an inexpensive 3D printer or even painted by hand, serves as a low-cost, reversible actuator. When an electrical current is applied, the thermoplastic heats and expands, causing the paper to bend or fold; when the current is removed, the paper returns to a pre-determined shape.

“We are reinventing this really old material,” said Lining Yao, assistant professor in the HCII and director of the Morphing Matter Lab, who developed the method with her team. “Actuation truly turns paper into another medium, one that has both artistic and practical uses.”

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