The Southern University has made a new development in 3D printing technology.
Researchers have successfully created a 3D printing strategy to construct flexible and stretchable light-emitting devices that can be integrated with soft robots.
This research is demonstrated in a soft robot that can change color to match its background and may aid in developing next-generation smart displays, wearable electronics, and artificial camouflage.
Producing flexible electronics has expensive tools and many scientific steps. Therefore, there is a need for an easy and versatile fabrication strategy to support the increasing demand for flexible electroluminescence devices in technological and optical applications.
Ji Liu and researchers display an approach to fabricating flexible electroluminescence devices through multi-material 3D printing. They formulated ion conducting, electroluminescent and insulating inks suitable for 3D printing. These inks can be used to create facile, on-demand, flexible, and stretchable electroluminescent devices.
With this development, Ji Liu and his colleagues integrated a flexible wristband that gives off blue light into the soft robot that can change color fast, like a chameleon.
The authors indicate the devices display stable electroluminescence even under different modes of mechanical deformation, such as bending, twisting, and stretching.
As a chameleon becomes more stimulated, its color becomes more yellow, orange, and red, meaning it becomes more visible rather than adapting to the color around it.
Chameleons have different cells in their skin that contain colored pigments. Some are yellow, some are red, and some include the dark pigment melanin. It is known that the cells of chameleons and many other animals turn a darker shade by secreting melanin from their fingerlike appendages. It concentrates the pigment in one spot, making it lighter again.