Acquisition of a VisCube C4-WU CAVE Immersive 3D Display Upgrade to Advance Undergraduate Teaching and Research in Spatial Visualization at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff

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Today, flexible electronic circuits and printable nanomaterials based chemical/biological (CB) sensors require versatile board printing systems to support current and future initiatives in additive manufacturing and material development. In addition to low cost, flexible electronics offers light-weighted, thin-film electronics circuits capable of adhering on flexible and conformal surfaces. Such technology is expected to bring revolutionary changes to the current landscape of electronics, including thin-film cell phones, window-stickable thin-film TV, and functional clothes or removal skin stackers with various sensing, memory and communication capabilities.This project is acquiring a versatile Optomec Aerosol Jet 300 (AJ 300) printing system for flexible electronic circuits and printable nanomaterials based chemical/biological (CB) sensors. The requested state-of-the-art system is expected to provide new capabilities to promote interdisciplinary research and education. The instrumentation, an additive, high-resolution multi-layer printing system capable of uniformly delivering fluid and nano-materials on almost any planar substrate or 3D surface with precise multi-layer alignment accuracy, enables the researchers to perform systematic research on fundamental issues of flexible electronics, such as carrier (electrons and holes) transport on flexible surfaces, and circuit performance variation under bending and strain due to changes in the band structure, Fermi-level, carrier mobility, and threshold voltage. The instrument acquired also provides a research platform for various flexible electronics and optoelectronics devices such as conformal antenna, highly ordered self-assembling polymer/clay nanocomposite, Terahertz radiation and detection, and additive manufacturing. Furthermore, the instrumentation supports research in scaling and integration of direct printing and investigate the couplings between the deposition of the droplets, formation of the composite structure, and device performance. The instrument can also serve in K-12 outreach programs in forms of lab tours with live printed flexible electronics and printing system demonstrations.