Researchers designed a device based on the golden tortoise beetle, and like the beetle, the device can changes colors when a mechanical stress is applied. This image shows the various components that comprise the 3-D printable device. (via MIT News / Subramanian Sundaram)
In the technology-heavy age we live in today, touch-sensitive surfaces are becoming increasingly popular among consumers for their elegance and convenience. Tech experts at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are now finding an even greater number of different applications for these touch-sensitive surfaces by improving their durability, producibility, and practicality with 3D printing. The device they have developed intends to replicate the network of “sensors and interconnects” found in nature, called sensorimotor pathways, in a 3D printed object. This intention brought them to simplest organism they could find: the golden tortoise beetle, and just as the beetle changes from gold to a reddish-orange when prodded, the researchers’ device can change color when a mechanical stress is applied.
The device was made using a custom 3D printer called MultiFab, and the somewhat T-shaped gadget has a wide and short base with an elongated crossbar that houses a strip of silver along its length, according to MIT News writer Larry Hardesty. The crossbar is made from a more elastic flexible plastic, while the base is more rigid, and two transistors work in combination with a semiconducting polymer arranged in a circle (which the researchers call a “pixel”). When the crossbar of the T-shaped device is stretched, the semiconducting polymer circle shifts colors because the mechanical (stretching) force changes the electrical resistance of the silver strip. Hardesty says that the concept of this technology can be applied in bridges and airplanes as a flexible, cost-effective technology which could colorfully signal when the system is under stress.
According to the primary author of this research, Subramanian Sundaram, 3D printing enables this research to be applied to a wide variety of devices, and that using different kinds of substrates provides different capabilities. Certain substrates can only have particular substances deposited on top of them, but according to Hardesty, “Because a printed substrate could consist of many materials, interlocked in intricate but regular patterns, it broadens the range of functional materials that printable electronics can use.” To Sundaram, the ability to use a 3D printer to make these substrates allows the researchers to focus on printing devices with more complex shapes, and therefore an even greater number of possible implementations. This device is an “initial demonstration” of the researchers’ 3D printing technique, and with the seemingly broad potential applications for flexible and durable, touch-sensitive surface technology, their research appears to have a promising future.
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