Tiny springs etched into silicon make the brittle material bend — and tune future wireless waves

Silicon is brilliant and fragile: it shatters rather than bends, which limits where engineers can use it. Researchers at the Osaka Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, with the University of Osaka and Tohoku University, etched microscopic spiral springs directly into a silicon wafer, turning the rigid sheet into something that flexes and stretches. Published in the journal Optica, the work matters because silicon guides terahertz waves — the frequencies between microwaves and light, candidates for future wireless communications and material inspection. Stretch the springy silicon by 12.6% and the way it slows those waves changes measurably, which means a device could be tuned simply by pulling it. 'The key was to build flexibility into the silicon structure itself,' said senior researcher Hidemasa Yamane.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation