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A step toward fully 3D-printed active electronics
Researchers produced 3D-printed, semiconductor-free logic gates, which perform computations in active electronic devices. As they don’t require semiconductor materials, they represent a step toward 3D printing an entire active electronic device.
The researchers’ semiconductor-free devices, which they produced using standard 3D printing hardware and an inexpensive, biodegradable material, can perform the same switching functions as the semiconductor-based transistors used for processing operations in active electronics. This could allow anyone to create smart hardware far from traditional manufacturing centers,” says Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) and senior author of a paper describing the devices, which appears in Virtual and Physical Prototyping. An intriguing application is on-demand 3D printing of mechatronics on board spacecraft,” says Roger Howe, the William E. Ayer Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University, who was not involved with this work.
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