3D Printed Hybrid Flexible Electronics with Direct Light Synthesis

The design freedom offered by 3D printing is transformative and has been leveraged to fabricate structural electronics with multi-functionality. A proposed approach to extend this concept is to print three-dimensional jigsaw subsections of a structure with mortise and tenon features, populate the superficial surfaces with wires and components and then fuse the pieces together to allow for arbitrary placement of the electronics within the final structure. By constructing the final structure with multiple pieces, a diversity of materials (e.g. stiff and flexible) can also be leveraged in order to create new applications like bladder pumps, shape-to-fit flexible wearables, etc. The paper explores the mechanical utility by measuring shear and butt joint strength of fused vat photopolymerized pieces. Once validated, several demonstrations were designed and implemented to illustrate how consolidating a group of mated complex pieces can enable novel applications including wearables, soft robotics, and spatially-efficient electronics.