Engineering for a changing world: 60th Ilmenau Scientific Colloquium, Technische Universität Ilmenau, September 04-08, 2023 : programme

In 2023, the Ilmenau Scientific Colloquium is once more organised by the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The title of this year’s conference “Engineering for a Changing World” refers to limited natural resources of our planet, to massive changes in cooperation between continents, countries, institutions and people – enabled by the increased implementation of information technology as the probably most dominant driver in many fields. The Colloquium, supplemented by workshops, is characterised but not limited to the following topics: – Precision engineering and measurement technology Nanofabrication – Industry 4.0 and digitalisation in mechanical engineering – Mechatronics, biomechatronics and mechanism technology – Systems engineering – Productive teaming - Human-machine collaboration in the production environment The topics are oriented on key strategic aspects of research and teaching in Mechanical Engineering at our university

A toolchain for open-loop compensation of hysteresis and creep in atomic force microscopes

Any Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) scanner based on piezoelectric ceramics is affected by nonlinear distortions, mainly due to rate-independent hysteresis and rate-dependent creep, two different phenomena often referred to, collectively, as rate-dependent hysteresis. To compensate for these distortions, especially in old or cheap instruments, empirical open-loop compensation techniques are frequently adopted. In this paper, a complete hardware/software toolchain is proposed, for data acquisition, identification of hysteresis and creep models, and real-time open-loop compensation of rate-dependent hysteresis in AFM scanners

Navigating the lab-on-chip manufacturability roadblock: scalable, low-cost fluorescence detection for lab-on-chip instrumentation with rapid-prototyped microfluidics

Miniaturisation and automation of laboratory testing protocols onto microfluidic chips (lab-on-chip technology) could revolutionise diagnostic testing, though the key challenge of integrating high levels of functionality at a low-cost has so far prevented widespread adoption both in industry and academia. Specifically, implementation of a cost-accessible fluorescence detection has eluded the field and ensured nearly all commercial and academic instruments are too costly for routine applications. The field also faces a manufacturability problem, as it is dominated by expensive and/or low-throughput fabrication approaches. This thesis aims to address core concerns on both the instrument and fluidic chip fronts through the development of a low-cost fluorescence detection module capable of executing standard molecular diagnostics. The detection was inherently designed to interface with a series of rapid-prototyped polymer fluidics that I designed and fabricated with direct-write methods (micromilling and laser ablation) and minimal processing, allowing for quick iterations of fluidic designs while retaining compatibility with high throughput manufacturing procedures such as injection moulding. The result is a sub-$1000 prototype capable of executing gold-standard diagnostic testing at sub-$10 per chip, though the specific protocol development is still on-going. Finally, these components have been designed in a scalable manner such that it is feasible for future manufacturing to be done in a standard CMOS compatible process, a process that also faces manufacturability issues and high development costs that could be avoided by utilising these designs as prototyping testbeds. Thus, this work provides a roadmap from interim low-cost instrumentation and rapid-prototyping methods, through standard high volume polymer processing techniques, to a true single-chip device where the entire instrument may one day be fabricated at high volume in a USB-key sized package