Multimaterial additive manufacturing manipulator for fabricating magnetoelectric pressure sensors

The simultaneous placement of different types of materials including polymers,ceramics,and metals,in their desired positions could be adopted to manufacture end-use devices/apparatuses with diverse functionalities and significantly reduce the fabrication cost and time.However,existing additive manufacturing(AM)approaches can only treat one material species at a time due to their intrinsic working mechanisms.Here we develop an AM manipulator for manufacturing a wide variety of material species,including polymers,ceramics,and metals,through a multifilament transport strategy assisted by laser power.The six-jaw manipulator contains three pairs of filament delivering/cutting systems for transporting diverse materials and a beam of tunable laser as the thermal source.The whole apparatus is integrated into a robotic manipulator to create a multifreedom manufacturing platform.With this innovation,products with multiple material species and desired complex geometries can be fabricated on demand.Furthermore,we synthesize a multimaterial(polymer/ceramic/metal)printed magnetoelectric pressure sensor that can convert applied mechanical forces to electricity and maintain efficiency even after undergoing 10000 cycles of pressure/recovery.With this multimaterial filament transport and laser manufacturing strategy,our AM manipulator exhibits promising application in the advanced manufacturing of embedded electronics,sensors,soft robotics,and customizable medical devices.