Printed sensors via aerosol jet printing

Abstract

Wearable technology comes in the form of textiles that can be worn on the body. These wearables use sensors that enable smart functionality to enhance creativity, communication, and physical senses. There are many various sensors available around the world today, and the aim would be to utilise a high-resolution 3D printing technique to fabricate wearable sensors. Aerosol jet printing has been utilized as the fabrication process for sensors to be used with wearable technology. This form of 3D printing enables high precision fabrication of various Electronic Nanomaterial. In this project, different electronic nanomaterials are employed to determine if the mechanical property of each nanomaterial is suitable to be used as a sensing element. Process optimization is also conducted to establish if aerosol jet printing is an applicable operation for the printing of wearable sensors. The results show that electronic nanomaterial on a polyimide substrate is suitable for wearable technology as the sensors would be flexible, thin, and lightweight to be integrated onto wearable technology. The work of this project could be used to investigate the fabrication of sensors that can detect different forms of stimuli.