Preface
On behalf of the Multi-Material Micro Manufacture (4M) Association, the International Institution for Micro Manufacturing (I2M2) and International Forum on Micro Manufacturing (IFMM), it is our pleasure to welcome you in Portorož, Slovenia for the 2nd World Congress on Micro and Nano Manufacturing (WCMNM 2018).
The first 4M conference dedicated to micro manufacturing and assembly was held at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe back in 2005. It was a gathering of partners within the EC-funded 4M Network of Excellence. Just a year later, International Conference on Micro Manufacturing (ICOMM) was organised at the University of Illinois ‐ Urbana‐Champaign by I2M2 community. In 2009, the two communities organised their first joint 4M/ICOMM conference at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology that was followed by two more joint conferences at the University of Wisconsin ‐ Madison in 2010 and the Politecnico di Milano in 2015. Building upon the success of these jointly organised conferences and with the support of the Asian Micro Manufacturing community (IFMM) the First World Congress on Micro and Nano technologies (WCMNM) was held in Kaoshung, Taiwan.
The Congress is a culminating step in establishing a global forum of academics and industrial practitioners devoted to micro manufacturing technologies, assembly & handling of micro parts, surface engineering, microfactories, micro sensors & systems and nanotechnologies. The WCMNM 2018 proceedings include 91 papers from EU, USA, Japan, Korea, India, Taiwan, Singapore, China and Canada.
The manufacturing processes at microscale are recognised as the key-enabling technologies in bridging the gap between the micro/nano and the macro worlds. In addition, such multi-scale approach increases the accuracy of micro and nano precision production technologies, and also underpins the incorporation of different dimensional scales in mass‐manufacturing processes. This product miniaturisation trend is enabled by advances of micro manufacturing processes in the last two decades and thus to build upon and complement commonly used silicon based technologies. The design and validation of process chains that are underpinned by the latest advances in micro tool-making and surface engineering technologies, and high throughput replication processes have led to the development of cost effective routes for producing micro parts. This has been a key enabler for the implementation of laboratory results in practical applications, e.g. new solutions for point‐of‐care testing and new micro factories for chemical process engineering based on microfluidic systems. In addition, recently the latest advances in additive manufacturing technologies have opened new possibilities for designing and manufacturing micro products for new emerging applications in other fields. Thus, reflecting on this general trend a significant number of papers focused on additive manufacturing at micro scale will be presented during the Congress. New findings related to sensors, surface engineering and microfactories will be reported, too. We do hope that the cross‐fertilisation of ideas and the advances in micro and nano manufacturing reported during the three Congress days will inspire new research and development directions and become a catalyst for mutually beneficial joint ventures.
The Congress Chairs would like to thank Dr. Irene Fassi, Prof. Tohuru Sasaki and Assoc. Prof. Samuel Bigot for their service as Scientific Chairs and overseeing the papers' peer-review process. Also, a special thanks to Mr. Afif Batal, who took care of the Congress administration and who was a key "focal point" for all of us.
It is a great honour to host such a remarkable event at the Slovenian coast.
Congress chair
Joško Valentinčič, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Congress co-chairs
Stefan Dimov, University of Birmingham, UK
Martin Byung-Guk Jun, Purdue University, USA
Kuniaki Dohda, Northwestern University, USA