Summary: The potential of wearable electronic products far exceeds that of smart watches, but our current selection of battery packs and circuit boards cannot be the most comfortable electronic socks. One solution developed by Chinese scientists is to print flexible fibers on transitional textiles or clothing. For example, the patterns they print on fabric can collect and store electricity.

The patterns they print can be harvested and stored in the fabric. Using a 3D printer equipped with a coaxial needle, they drew patterns, pictures and letters on the fabric to enable it to convert movement into energy. This progress appeared in the March 27 issue of Material, a new material science journal from the publisher Cell Press.

Zhang Yingying, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University, said: “They used a 3D printer equipped with a self-made coaxial nozzle to print fibers directly on textiles and proved that it can be used for energy management. A coaxial nozzle method was proposed. Because the single-axis nozzle only allows one type of ink to be printed at a time, it greatly limits the composition diversity and functional design of the printing structure."

Zhang and her colleagues made their first batch of 3D printed electronic textiles using two inks, a solution of carbon nanotubes, a conductive core used to construct fibers and a silk used for insulating sheath (although other laboratories can choose Adjust the flexibility, biocompatibility and water resistance of materials). The injection syringe filled with ink is connected to the coaxial nozzle, which is fixed on the 3D printer. These are used to draw customer design patterns, such as PRINTING Chinese is printing, English words SILK and pictures of pigeons.

This method is different from other groups that manually sew electronic components (such as LED fibers) into the fabric, but these multi-step processes require a lot of manpower and time. The advantage of using a 3D printer is that it can build multiple functions for the fabric in one step. Because the nozzle is compatible with existing 3D printers and the parts can be interchanged, this method is cheap and easy to scale. However, one disadvantage is that the resolution of printing is limited to the mechanical motion accuracy of the 3D printer and the size of the nozzle.

Professor Zhang Yingying said: "They hope that this work will inspire others to build other types of 3D printer nozzles, which can generate designs with rich composition and structural diversity, and can even integrate multiple coaxial nozzles, which can generate multi-functionality in one step. Electronic textiles. The long-term goal is to design flexible, wearable hybrid materials and electronic products with unprecedented characteristics, while developing new technologies for actual production of smart wearable systems with integrated functions, such as sensing, driving, communication, and so on. "

Link to this article： Feasibility study of 3D printer printing electronic fiber on clothing

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