{"id":241262,"date":"2026-07-21T05:22:01","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T10:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/mechanical-engineers-develop-buttons-that-rise-with-light"},"modified":"2026-07-21T05:22:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T10:22:01","slug":"mechanical-engineers-develop-buttons-that-rise-with-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/mechanical-engineers-develop-buttons-that-rise-with-light","title":{"rendered":"Mechanical engineers develop buttons that rise with light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mechanical-engineers-develop-buttons-that-rise-with-light.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>No wires. No actuators. Shine light on the metal surface, and it rises like a button. KAIST researchers have developed a metal structure that changes shape using light, without any light-absorbing coating. This technology could open new possibilities for tactile interfaces with physical pop-up buttons, shape displays, next-generation wearable devices and soft robots.<\/p>\n<p>A research team led by Professor Il-Kwon Oh from the Department of Mechanical Engineering has developed a technology that transforms a flat NiTi shape-memory alloy (SMA) sheet into a \u201cphotothermally driven meta-morphing structure\u201d that rises from a flat surface into a three-dimensional form when exposed to light, using only a single UV laser process.<\/p>\n<p>The results are <a href=\"https:\/\/advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/advs.74930\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal <i>Advanced Science.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No wires. No actuators. Shine light on the metal surface, and it rises like a button. KAIST researchers have developed a metal structure that changes shape using light, without any light-absorbing coating. This technology could open new possibilities for tactile interfaces with physical pop-up buttons, shape displays, next-generation wearable devices and soft robots. A research [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1977],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-wearables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}