Biomimetic Soft Polymer Microstructures and Piezoresistive Graphene MEMS Sensors Using Sacrificial Metal 3D Printing

Recent work by Amar M. Kamat from Kottapalli's team has been published recently in the ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces journal. This work develops a new technique based on sacrificial metal 3D printing and graphene infusion to fabricate very intricate and miniature PDMS structures such as bioinspired sterecilia bundles, double helical microfluidic channels inside high-aspect ratio pillars, and piezoresistive MEMS flow and pressure sensors with embedded sensing elements. The MEMS pressure sensor was also integrated into a Philips electric shaver to allow real-time pressure measurements during shaving. Congrats to Amar Kamat for leading this nice work and thanks to the co-authors Bayu Jayawardhana and Yutao Pei for the collaboration.

Link to the paper (open access): https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.0c21295

Link to video demonstration of smart shaving application of 3D printed polymer MEMS sensors: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acsami.0c21295/suppl_file/am0c21295_si_002.mp4