JP2002178175A - Microstructure display model and method of modeling the same - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a novel microstructure display model which not only permits observation from all angles by naked dyes, makes the state observable as it is without constituting superfluous elements even when atoms and molecules exist separately and is exceedingly inexpensively modeled as compared with the conventional modeling method. SOLUTION: This microstructure display model is modeled by irradiating the inside of a transparent material 1 with a laser beam 2 and imparting optical damages to the inside of the transparent material 1. This modeling method has a three-dimensional data forming process step of forming three-dimensional data for displaying a microstructure on a display device connected to a computer, a data conversion process step of converting the three-dimensional data formed by the three-dimensional data process step to data for modeling readable by a laser beam machine and a modeling process step of imparting the optical damages to the inside of the transparent material by driving the laser beam machine with the converted data for modeling and irradiating the inside of the transparent material with the laser beam from the laser beam machine.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a microstructure display model used in, for example, a research field or an education field of chemistry or a material system, and a method of forming the microstructure display model.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art For example, in the field of research or education of chemistry or materials, a material design support system based on a molecular orbital method or a molecular mechanics method is used theoretically, and a simple substance, a compound, a Attempts have been made to construct the structure of substances such as liquids, liquids, solids, solutions, and amorphous materials and to theoretically elucidate them. The material design support system includes, for example, molecular / crystal modeling software based on the theory such as molecular orbital method and molecular mechanics method, molecular display software, simulation software based on molecular dynamics method and molecular Monte Carlo method, and molecular database. Etc.

When elucidating the structure of a substance, particularly the microstructure such as the structure of atoms and molecules, using the above-mentioned material design support system, a method for accurately expressing the shape and size of the atoms and molecules is used. Conventionally, such expression methods include replacing the spread of electrons and non-contact regions with other atoms and electrons with a sphere using a van der Waals radius, or inter-atomic A method has been adopted in which the distance is represented by a line or a bar, whereby the structure of the molecule is represented in three dimensions. For example, a molecular model such as a space filling model, a rod model, a ball-and-stick model, or a wire model has been conventionally employed as a method for expressing the shape and size of atoms and molecules. In addition to the method of expressing the structure of atoms and electrons by a material design support system based on the theory of the molecular orbital method and the molecular mechanics method, the latest microscopes (tunnel microscope (STM), scanning tunnel microscope (STM) , An atomic force microscope (AFM), etc.), the measurement data of the microstructure of the substance is transferred to a computer (to a display device connected to the computer main body) 3
There is also a method of reproducing the dimension.

[0004] Regardless of the method described above, the expression of the microstructure of a substance is displayed using computer graphics (CG) and is treated as a virtual object on a computer. It is not intended to be a substantive model. In other words, in the field of conventional research and education, it is considered that it is only necessary to be able to express the microstructure of a substance as a virtual object on a computer, and only the handling as CG data is considered.

[0005] However, in such a virtual expression method on a computer, in a research site or an educational site,
It is not enough to understand the microstructure of a substance because it is not an entity that can be observed from all directions with the naked eye.

Accordingly, as a method of observing the microstructure of such a substance with the naked eye, there is a method of forming a microstructure by processing a resin, glass, or the like. For example, a cutting method in which a resin, wood, or styrene foam is cut by cutting with a cutting tool, or a mold in which a space corresponding to a microstructure to be formed is formed, and a molten resin, There is a molding method in which gypsum or a low-melting metal is filled and cured, and an optical molding method in which a photocurable resin is cured by irradiating a laser beam to form the microstructure. According to the microstructure display model formed by such a shaping method, it becomes possible to visually observe the microstructure of a substance from all directions. In addition to the above molding methods, a molecular structure model comprising a sphere formed of expanded styrene and connecting rods connecting these spheres (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-202260), or a regular triangle, hexagon, or square A three-dimensional structural model of a molecule in which a plurality of plastic plates are connected to form a hollow tetrahedron or a hexahedron, and these are further connected by a plane (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H8-22244) has been proposed.

[0007]

However, the method of forming a molecular model by a processing method such as the above-mentioned cutting method, molding method, stereolithography method is extremely expensive,
Not only is it not suitable for mass production, but if atoms and molecules are present separately from each other, they must be separated from each other via a support such as a rod that is not a component of the material. The distance between the two substances cannot be maintained accurately. That is, in the microstructure display model formed by the above-described conventional method, there is an inherent limit since a plurality of substances cannot be suspended in the air. Also, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 8-202260 and 8-22244 described above.
In the model disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. H10-157, as in the case of the microstructure display model created by the above-described molding method, when atoms and molecules are present separately, the microstructure by the above-mentioned molding method cannot be accurately represented. In addition to having the same fundamental problems as the structural display model, a sphere or a plastic plate must be formed for each substance. Further, in the molecular model disclosed in the above publication, the actual molecular structure is different from the same combination of atoms in the intermolecular distance between atoms and the bond angle depending on each arrangement in the molecule, and cannot be accurately represented. Furthermore, even the same molecule cannot be accurately represented because the structure is different between a solid, a liquid, and a gas, and the molecule is distorted.

Accordingly, the present invention has been proposed to solve the problems of the above-described conventional microstructure display model and the method of forming the microstructure display model, and is to be observed from all angles with the naked eye. Not only is possible, even if atoms and molecules are present separately, it is possible to observe the state as it is without forming extra elements, and in the case of the conventional molding method It is an object of the present invention to provide a novel microstructure display model or a method of forming the microstructure display model that can be formed at a significantly lower cost.

[0009]

Means for Solving the Problems The present invention has been proposed to achieve the above object, and the first invention (the invention described in claim 1) relates to a microstructure display model. In addition, a microstructure is formed by irradiating a laser beam into the transparent material and causing optical damage to the transparent material.

In the first invention, the transparent substance is a natural ore such as quartz, quartz, or amethyst, a light-transmitting glass, or a light-transmitting resin. Described invention) can be used. As the resin, for example, an acrylic resin, a polyester resin, a polymethacrylic resin, or a composite resin thereof can be used. The laser light is
Solid-state lasers represented by YAG lasers and YLF lasers,
Further, a gas laser typified by the second harmonic, the third harmonic, and the excimer laser can be used. At least, when the transparent material is irradiated with the laser beam, optical damage occurs in the transparent material. Anything can be given as long as it can give.

Since the microstructure formed by the optical damage due to the laser light irradiation is formed in the transparent material, the microstructure is formed even when atoms and molecules are present separately from each other. , Can be expressed without constituting extra elements. That is, the microstructure
It can be observed from any angle with the naked eye as it is.

Further, the second invention (the invention according to claim 2)
In the first invention, the laser beam is driven according to modeling data obtained by converting three-dimensional coordinate data created for displaying a microstructure through a conversion program. Is what you do.

In the second invention, the three-dimensional coordinate data created for displaying the microstructure includes, for example,
Types of atoms such as carbon (C), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N),
It refers to data such as charge of atoms, bond information between atoms, x, y, and z coordinate values of atoms. Note that these three-dimensional coordinate data can be obtained from, for example, Brookhaven National Laboratory or RCSB.
(Research Collaborative fo
r Structural Bioinformatic
s) PDB (Protein Data Bank)
Format data can be used. In addition, these 3
The dimensional coordinate data is calculated using computer graphics (C
According to G), since the data format is to be displayed on a display device (monitor) connected to the computer main body, it is converted into modeling data via a program (software). This modeling data is stored in a CAD (computer-aided design drafting system: Computer).
Aided Design (CAM) and CAM (Computer Aided Production: Computer Aided Manu)
factoring) data (for example, DXF (Drawing Interchange)
File) format data, or STL (Stereolithography) of 3D System Co., Ltd.
The data is in the form of an interface format). Specifically, the shaping data is read by a laser processing apparatus, and a laser beam is emitted into the transparent material according to the data. When converting the three-dimensional coordinate data (for example, the data in the PDB format) into the data in the DXF format or the data in the STL format,
As the above conversion program, molecular display software of a material (substance) design support system (for example, Molecu)
lar Simulation WebLab Vi
The above various molecular model representations are converted to VRML (VirtualR) using the newerLite (trademark software).
ease Modeling Language)
The data is converted into data in a format, and further converted by a conversion software (for example, 3D Studio Max software of Autodesk) into a DXF format for modeling or the above 3D format.
There is a method of converting the data into D System STL format data.

According to the present invention, since the three-dimensional coordinate data created to display the microstructure is used, the microstructure display model has extremely high accuracy.

The fourth invention (the invention according to claim 4)
The present invention relates to a method for forming a microstructure display model, comprising: a three-dimensional data creation step of creating three-dimensional data for displaying a microstructure on a display device connected to a computer; and a three-dimensional data creation step. A data conversion step of converting the three-dimensional data created by the laser processing apparatus into modeling data read by the laser processing apparatus; and driving the laser processing apparatus by the modeling data converted by the data conversion step, thereby forming a transparent material. And a molding step of irradiating the transparent material with laser light to cause optical damage to the transparent material.

The above-mentioned three-dimensional data creation step includes a step of recording the above-mentioned PDB on a recording medium built in the computer or connected to the computer main body via the Internet, and combining the data obtained from the PDB. Processing steps such as deleting or deleting.

[0017]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, a method for forming a microstructure display model according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. In the embodiment described below, the present invention is applied to a method of forming a microstructure display model of an aqueous ethanol solution (hereinafter, referred to as a main forming method) as an example of a microstructure.

First, as shown in FIG.
Create or obtain three-dimensional coordinate data of a micro model of an ethanol aqueous solution as a final product (three-dimensional data creation step). The three-dimensional coordinate data is obtained from the carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms constituting the aqueous ethanol solution.
, Information on the charge of each atom, information on the bond between atoms, x, y, z coordinate values of the atoms, etc., and a material design support system (for example, Hyp).
placing water molecules around the ethanol molecules using ercubu's HyperCem ™ software;
The result of simulation by molecular dynamics calculation
SB (Research Collaboratory)
for Structural Bioinformat
ics) 's PDB (Protein Data Ban)
k) Save as format data. When the ethanol aqueous solution is displayed on a display device (monitor) connected to the computer main body using computer graphics (CG) based on such three-dimensional coordinate data, FIG.
become that way.

When the above-described three-dimensional coordinate data is created or obtained, as shown in FIG. 1, the three-dimensional coordinate data is converted into VRML (Virtual Reality M) by a first conversion software (program).
modeling language) data. This first conversion software is Mole, which is molecular display software of a material (substance) design support system.
Web Lab from cultural Simulation
Use ViewLite ™. When the operation of converting the three-dimensional coordinate data into VRML data is completed by the first conversion software, the VRML data is then converted into CAD data by the second conversion software. This second conversion software is 3D Studio Ma from Autodesk
The second conversion software converts the VRML data into data in a modeling DXF format or the like.

Then, the three-dimensional coordinate data is
By the first and second conversion software, the molding D
Convert it to data in XF format, etc.
Using a data of F format or the like, the data is read into a computer main body connected to a laser processing device (not shown), and a transparent glass 1 is irradiated with a laser beam 2 as shown in FIG. FIG. 3 schematically shows a state in which the laser light 2 is emitted to the glass 1 mounted and fixed on the table 3. The laser light 2 emitted from the light source 4 of the laser light 2 is: After being incident on the condensing optical system (condensing lens) 5, the light is gradually condensed and the most condensed portion (focus) 2a causes optical damage inside the glass 1. By continuing such optical damage (dots) given to the inside of the glass 1, as shown in FIG. 4, a microstructure display model (molecules of an aqueous ethanol solution) corresponding to the three-dimensional coordinate data is provided inside the glass 1. Structural model) 6
Is formed.

When such a microstructure display model 6 is formed by the laser beam 2, a method of driving the laser beam 2 emitted from the light source 4 in the x, y, and z directions, or a method of driving the glass 1 In addition to the method of driving the table 3 to be placed in the x, y, and z directions, a galvano scanner (not shown) that scans the laser beam 2 can be used. In either case, the focus 2a of the laser light 2 is gradually shifted from the position farthest from the condensing optical system 5 (the lower surface side of the glass 1 shown in FIG. 3). The molding is performed over a direction close to 5 (the upper surface side of the glass 1 shown in FIG. 3).

Therefore, according to the microstructure display model (molecular structure model of an aqueous ethanol solution) 6 formed by such a forming method, researchers and the like can observe the microstructure display model 6 with the naked eye from all angles. Not only possible, but also the ethanol molecule 6a shown in FIG.
In addition, the water molecules 6b which are separated from the ethanol molecules 6a should be expressed without providing a support which is not a constituent element of the substance as in the case of the microstructure display model by the conventional molding method or molding method. Can be. Moreover, according to this shaping method, the shaping can be performed at a much lower cost than in the case of the conventional forming method, and the shaping can be performed in a short time.

In the above-described embodiment, two conversion software (programs) are used to convert three-dimensional coordinate data into CAD data. However, one conversion software may be used. Of course,
Finally, besides converting to DXF data, IGES
Data or STL data may be converted.

[0024]

As is clear from the above description of one embodiment of the present invention, according to the present invention, a microstructure formed by optical damage due to irradiation of a laser beam is embedded in the transparent material. Since it is formed, even if atoms and molecules are present separately from each other, they do not constitute extra elements. Therefore, it can be a very useful teaching material in the field of research or education in chemistry or materials.

Further, according to the method of forming a microstructure display model according to the present invention, a conventional cutting method, molding method,
Compared to the case where a molecular model is formed by a processing method such as a stereolithography method, it can be manufactured at a much lower cost and can be manufactured in a short time. And 3
As the dimensional coordinate data, the PDB (Protei
n Data Bank) data,
It can be used as an accurate microstructure display model based on theory, and can be used as a more academically useful teaching material for understanding the microstructure of materials in the field of research and education.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing a forming process of a microstructure display model.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing a molecular model when represented by CG using three-dimensional coordinate data.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram schematically showing a state in which glass is formed by irradiation with laser light.

FIG. 4 is a perspective view showing a microstructure display model as a completed product.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Glass 2 Laser beam 2a Focus 6 Microstructure display model 6a Ethanol molecule 6b Water molecule

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[Procedure amendment]

[Submission date] December 19, 2000 (200.12.
19)

[Procedure amendment 1]

[Document name to be amended] Statement

[Correction target item name] 0007

[Correction method] Change

[Correction contents]

[0007]

However, the method of forming a molecular model by the above-mentioned processing methods such as the cutting method, the forming method, and the stereolithography method is extremely expensive.
Not only is it not suitable for mass production, but if atoms and molecules are present separately from each other, they must be separated from each other via a support such as a rod that is not a component of the material. The distance between the two substances cannot be maintained accurately. That is, in the microstructure display model formed by the above-described conventional method, there is an inherent limit since a plurality of substances cannot be suspended in the air. Also, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 8-202260 and 8-22244 described above.
In the model disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. JP-A-2005-115, as in the case of the microstructure display model created by the above-described molding method, when atoms and molecules are present separately, in that they cannot be accurately represented, It has the same essential problems as the microstructure display model, and has to form a sphere or a plastic plate for each atom . Further, in the molecular model disclosed in the above publication, the actual molecular structure is different from the same combination of atoms in the intermolecular distance between atoms and the bond angle depending on each arrangement in the molecule, and cannot be accurately represented. Furthermore, even the same molecule cannot be accurately represented because the structure is different between a solid, a liquid, and a gas, and the molecule is distorted.

[Procedure amendment 2]

[Document name to be amended] Statement

[Correction target item name] 0013

[Correction method] Change

[Correction contents]

In the second invention, the three-dimensional coordinate data created for displaying the microstructure includes, for example,
Types of atoms such as carbon (C), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N),
It refers to data such as charge of atoms, bond information between atoms, x, y, and z coordinate values of atoms. Note that these three-dimensional coordinate data can be obtained from, for example, Brookhaven National Laboratory or RCSB.
(Resea r ch Collaboratory f
or Structu r al Bioinformat
ics) PDB (Protein DataBan)
k) format data can be used. Since such three-dimensional coordinate data is in a data format to be displayed on a display device (monitor) connected to the computer main body by computer graphics (CG), the data is formed through a program (software). Is converted to data for use. This modeling data is stored in a CAD (computer-aided design drafting system: Computer).
Aided Design) data and CAM (computer-aided production: Co m puter Aided Ma
nufacturing) data (for example, DXF (Drawing Interchange) from Autodesk.
e File) format data, or STL (Stereolithography) from 3D Systems Inc.
y Interface Format) data. Specifically, the laser processing apparatus reads the shaping data, and emits a laser beam into the transparent material according to the data. Note that the DXF is converted from the three-dimensional coordinate data (for example, the data in the PDB format).
In the case of converting the data into the data in the STL format or the data in the STL format, as the conversion program, molecular display software (for example, Mol
ecoSimulation's WebLab
The various molecular model representations described above were converted to VRML (Virtua) using ViewLite (trademark software).
l Reality Modeling Langua
ge) format, and further converted software (for example, Autodesk 3D Studio M)
ax software), there is a method of converting the data into the DXF format for modeling or the STL format data of 3D System.

[Procedure amendment 3]

[Document name to be amended] Statement

[Correction target item name] 0018

[Correction method] Change

[Correction contents]

First, as shown in FIG.
Create or obtain three-dimensional coordinate data of a micro model of an ethanol aqueous solution as a final product (three-dimensional data creation step). The three-dimensional coordinate data is obtained from the carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms constituting the aqueous ethanol solution.
, Information on the charge of each atom, information on the bond between atoms, x, y, z coordinate values of the atoms, etc., and a material design support system (for example, Hyp
The water molecules were placed around the ethanol molecules using Ercub e's HyperC h em (TM) software), RCSB the results of simulation by molecular dynamics simulation (Resea r ch Collaborato
ry for Structure r al Bioinfo
rdatas) PDB (Protein Data)
(Bank) format data. When the ethanol aqueous solution is displayed on a display device (monitor) connected to the computer body using computer graphics (CG) based on such three-dimensional coordinate data, the result is as shown in FIG.

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A microstructure display model characterized in that a microstructure is formed by irradiating a transparent substance with a laser beam and causing optical damage to the transparent substance. 2. The microstructure display according to claim 1, wherein the laser beam is driven in accordance with modeling data obtained by converting three-dimensional coordinate data created for displaying a microstructure through a conversion program. model. 3. The microstructure display model according to claim 2, wherein the transparent material is made of a transparent glass or resin. 4. A three-dimensional data creation step for creating three-dimensional data for displaying a microstructure on a display device connected to a computer, and laser processing the three-dimensional data created in the three-dimensional data creation step. A data conversion step of converting the data into modeling data read by the apparatus, and the laser processing apparatus is driven by the modeling data converted by the data conversion step, and the transparent material is irradiated with laser light from the laser processing apparatus. A process of causing optical damage in the transparent material. 5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the transparent material is made of glass or resin having transparency.