Principal Investigator Luis Velasquez-Garcia (Heller)
Electrospray-Printed Physical SensorElectrospray deposition (ESD) has recently gained at- tention as a manufacturing technology to develop novel nanostructuredcompositestoproducelow-costmicro- and nano-devices. ESD is also a remarkably versatile printing technique due to its capability to create ultra- thin films made from a great variety of liquid feedstock (e.g., suspensions of polymeric, dielectric, metallic par- ticles) that can be doped with organic nanostructures to modulate the physical properties of the imprint. No- tably, the resulting nanoreinforced composites might show enhanced transduction, which, in combination with printing on flexible substrates, might be relevant for exciting applications such as wearable biomedical devices.
This project aims to develop an additively manufactured, low-cost, flexible physical sensor based on an ultrathin nanocomposite film doped with functionalized carbon nanostructures. Essentially, this project is divided in (i) down-selecting and optimizing the formulation of the liquid feedstock, (ii) optimizing the fabrication of the ultrathin (~100 nm) nanostructured composite, and (iii) demonstrating a flexible physical sensor with transducing component made of the optimized nanostructured composite.