3D printed PLA/copper bowtie antenna for biomedical imaging applications

Characteristics of antenna fabricated using additive manufacturing technology and the potential applications

Antennas play a critical role in modern technology. They are used in various devices and applications, including wireless communication, broadcasting, navigation, military, and space. Overall, the importance of antennas in technology lies in their ability to transmit and receive signals, allowing communication and information transfer across various applications and devices. Three-dimensional printing technology creates antennas using multiple materials, including plastics, metals, and ceramics. Some standard 3D printing techniques used to create antennas include Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). These antennas can be made in various shapes and sizes. 3D printing can help create complex and customized antenna designs that are difficult or impossible to produce using traditional manufacturing methods. 3D-printing technology has many advantages for building antennas, including customization, ease of fabrication, and cost-effectiveness. This review comprehensively evaluates the usage of 3D-printing technology in antenna fabrication.

New Metal-Plastic Hybrid Additive Manufacturing for Precise Fabrication of Arbitrary Metal Patterns on External and Even Internal Surfaces of 3D Plastic Structures

Constructing precise metal patterns on complex three-dimensional (3D) plastic parts allows the fabrication of functional devices for advanced applications. However, it is currently expensive and requires complex processes. This study demonstrates a process for the fabrication of 3D metal-plastic composite structures with arbitrarily complex shapes. A light-cured resin is modified to prepare the active precursor allowing subsequent electroless plating (ELP). A multimaterial digital light processing 3D printer was newly developed to fabricate the parts containing regions made of either standard resin or active precursor nested within each other. Selective 3D ELP processing of such parts provided various metal-plastic composite parts having complicated hollow structures with specific topological relationships with the resolution of 40 μm. Using this technique, 3D devices that cannot be manufactured by traditional methods are possible, and metal patterns can be produced inside plastic parts as a means of further miniaturizing electronics. The proposed method can also generate metal coatings exhibiting improved adhesion of metal to substrate. Finally, several sensors composed of different functional materials and specific metal patterns were designed and fabricated. The present results demonstrate the viability of the proposed method and suggest potential applications in the fields of 3D electronics, wearable devices, and sensors.

Multifunctional Material Extrusion 3D-Printed Antibacterial Polylactic Acid (PLA) with Binary Inclusions: The Effect of Cuprous Oxide and Cellulose Nanofibers

In this work, we present an effective process easily adapted in industrial environments for the development of multifunctional nanocomposites for material extrusion (MEX) 3D printing (3DP). The literature is still very limited in this field, although the interest in such materials is constantly increasing. Nanocomposites with binary inclusions were prepared and investigated in this study. Polylactic acid (PLA) was used as the matrix material, and cuprous oxide (Cu2O) and cellulose nanofibers (CNF) were used as nanoadditives introduced in the matrix material to enhance the mechanical properties and induce antibacterial performance. Specimens were built according to international standards with a thermomechanical process. Tensile, flexural, impact, and microhardness tests were conducted. The effect on the thermal properties of the matrix material was investigated through thermogravimetric analysis, and Raman spectroscopic analysis was conducted. The morphological characteristics were evaluated with atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDS) analyses. The antibacterial performance of the prepared nanomaterials was studied against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria, with a screening agar well diffusion method. All nanocomposites prepared exhibited biocidal properties against the bacteria tested. The tested PLA/1.0 CNF/0.5 Cu2O material had 51.1% higher tensile strength and 35.9% higher flexural strength than the pure PLA material.