Printed "bionic skin" sensors have potential for electronics and surgery

A new frontier for robotics could be crossed with the development of stretchy sensors that can be 3D printed onto a variety of surfaces. The technology, developed by a team at the University of Minnesota, can also potentially be used to print electronics directly onto human skin, where it could be used for remote health monitoring.

The project was led by Prof Michael McAlpine, who while working at Princeton in 2013 devised a method for printing a bionic ear by integrating a printed coil antenna with the structure made of cartilage.

For the current project, McAlpine's team developed a customised 3D printer with four nozzles to print specialised "inks” that make up the sensors. The base layer of the construction is silicone, two subsequent layers are conducting inks that make up the sensor electrodes themselves, on top of these is a coil-shaped pressure sensor, and finally there is a soluble layer to hold everything together and is dissolved away once the structure is complete. All of the inks set at room temperature, and can stretch up to three times their original size.