FRAGILITY

Wafers, especially silicon wafers, are crucial substrates in nanotechnology since they have a wide range of uses across electronics, optics, biomedicine, robotics, photonics, material science, biotechnology, informatics, and more.

Their are made often from a single crystal, and with nanometric precision can be coated with different materials, leading to interesting colours and light phenomena

The research’objective is to approach these substrates as core material aiming to investigate their fragility, to challenge their brittleness and their flatness (comparable with glass or ceramics), and to introduce three-dimensionality and flexibility.

The fragility of wafers makes the creation of fragments as an essential step. It is only by breaking them and surpassing their delicacy that we can unveil the limits of these materials. Through the act of breaking, we gain the opportunity to perceive these objects as no longer confined to a two-dimensional realm or mere flatness, but instead, a path to three-dimensionality unfolds before us. Then, a challenge lies in embracing the tension without reaching the failure threshold, but rather maintaining a state of equilibrium in elastic state: fortunately even fragile and rigid elements still provide a delicate and narrow window of opportunity.