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.