3-D printing of resistor, inductor and capacitor possible using thermoplastic conductive material

Researchers at Singapore's A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) invented a new type of thermoplastic electrically conducting material which can be used as a base material in 3-D printers to print not only electonic circuits but in future, it can also be used to fabricate the three most widely used electronics components; resistor capacitor and inductor. By using this material in 3-D printers, electronics engineers can assemble electronics gadgets without using traditional printed circuit boards. This invention of highly conducting thermoplastic material lead to creation of 3d modules of resistor capacitor and inductor by simply programming the 3-D printer. If the copper material is replaced by equally reliable plastic conductor in electronics, it's going to be huge change in the process of how electronics is manufactured. The desktop production of gadgets will become a reality. “I believe this will revolutionise desk-top manufacturing for electronic gadgets,” said Dr Johnson Goh, IMRE scientist and Head of the Science and Engineering Research Council’s (SERC) Nanofabrication and Characterisation Group and Principal Investigator of this project. Dr Goh and his team have made prototypes such as a USB connector that can light up a LED bulb, complex three-dimensional circuits, and a wearable flexible sensor by using this thermoplastic con...