Adaptive Printing of Conductive Microfibers for Seamless Functional Enhancement Across Diverse Surfaces and Shapes

Abstract

Developing methods to non-destructively deposit conductive materials onto existing objects can enhance their functionalities on-demand. However, designing and creating such structures to accommodate diverse shapes and surface textures of pre-fabricated objects remains challenging. We report an on-demand printing strategy for creating substrate-less, conducting microfiber patterns that can be adaptively deposited onto a wide range of objects, including daily-use stationery, tools, smartwatches, and unconventional materials like porous graphene aerogels. Solution-drawn microfibers are directly deposited onto the object in a semi-wet state upon synthesis, enabling seamless fiber-object integration in a single step. The design and format of the microfiber patterns can be tuned on-demand to adapt to the shapes and surface textures of target objects, ensuring compatibility with user-specific applications. These air-permissive, highly transparent layers minimally obstruct the original appearance and functions of the objects while equipping them with additional sensing, energy conversion, and electronic connectivity capabilities.

Keywords

Fiber / Sensor / Functionalization / Transient electronics / Customization / Fiber-of-things (FoT)

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Funding

European Research Council(ERC-StG)

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council(EP/R035393/1)

IET AF Harvey Research Prize

the Royal Academy of Engineering

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s)