auto-origami

Sheets of plastic that fold into tiny pyramids, boxes and spheres when water is added have been created by French researchers. They think the technique could one day be used to mass-produce the microscopic 3D components used in found inside many different devices from printers to medical sensors.

José Bico and colleagues at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI), in Paris, together with a team from the Paris Institute of Technology have shown that water droplets can be used to make flat shapes fold up to create more complex 3D structures. read on

via del.icio.us/diane.mar