Manufacturing with Soft Materials

Increasing demand in compact, hand-held or wearable devices has led to a significant need for new paradigms in device technologies such as flexible electronics. A recent report by National Research Council forecasts a total market share of $ 340 billion for flexible electronic devices by 2030. Maintained functionality under repeated mechanical deformation is the main material challenge flexible electronic device technologies. “Soft-matter” that are highly deformable due to their simultaneous solid and liquid like behavior (colloids, gels, elastomers, polymer solutions etc.), have widely been used in composite configurations for flexible device technologies including soft-sensors, artificial skins and flexible batteries. Despite this increasing interest, the science of manufacturing with soft-matter, unlike conventional industrial materials such as metals and semiconductors, is far from established. In this talk, the efforts in Manufacturing Processes and Machinery Laboratory (MPML) towards realizing high-precision processes and equipment for “soft-matter manufacturing” will be presented. Particular research on the manufacturing of (1) flexible energy storage devices through additive means, (2) highly conductive, three dimensional flexible electronic networks using liquid-metal alloys and (3) micro-engineered optical devices using UV-curable polymers will be emphasized.