"Hybrid Printing" Technique Results in Battery-Free, Stretchable, Wearable Health-Monitoring Sensors
Designed to offer better accuracy and lower power than existing approaches, this clever printer creates self-powered wearables.
Scientists at the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University, and the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering have developed a "hybrid printing" technique, which allows for the production of self-powered wearable devices — based on nanowire materials.
"The biggest advantage of our new hybrid printing method is the ability to integrate a wide range of functional and structural materials in one platform," Yanliang Zhang, associate profess of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, explains. "This streamlines the processes, reducing the time and energy needed to fabricate a device, while ensuring the performance of printed devices."
To prove the concept, Zhang and colleagues produced 3D-printed wearable sensors constructed from tellurium nanowire piezoelectric materials, silver nanowire electrodes, and silicone films — devices which could conform to the skin and detect a heartbeat, without the need for a battery or other external power source.
"The fully printed, sintering-free and poling-free, and stretchable piezoelectric device opens enormous opportunities for facile integration with a broad range of printed electronics and wearable devices," the team concludes in the paper's abstract, which covers the key advantages of the hybrid printing approach: A reduction in the energy required and an increase in dimensional accuracy.
The team's 3D printer combines two key manufacturing approaches: An aerosol jet, which deposits the tellurium nanowires; and a more traditional extruder for the body of the sensor.
The team's work has been published under closed-access terms in the journal Nano Energy.