Additive Manufacturing of Multi-Material Architectures: From Structural to Electronic and Robotic Materials

<b>Abstract </b>Additive manufacturing has shown the promise of freedom of designs, enabling parts customization and tailorable properties where superior structural performances can be achieved by a fraction of weight density compared to bulk material. However, it is presently difficult to directly print different materials (structural, dielectric, conducting and ferroelectrics) to create a complex device with multiple functionalities that responds to multiple stimuli. Unlike biological systems where functions, including sensing, actuation, and control, are closely integrated, few materials have comparable system complexity.<br/><br/>In this talk, I will present a suite of new multi-material additive manufacturing processes and design methodologies to create materials with prescribed structural and functional behaviors. The structural materials consist of a network of micro-unit cells which collectively influence new mechanical behaviors (from high-strength, lightweight to toughening) not seen in their native counterpart. When combined with an electronic and functional phase, these materials turn themselves into a robot and is capable of motions with multiple degrees of freedom and amplification of displacement in a prescribed direction in response to an electric field (and vice versa), and thus, programmed motions with self-sensing and feedback control. I will present the manufacturing and synthesis of these materials, as well as their mechanics and design methods underpinning their novel behaviors.