A Printing Press for the Digital Age - Hackster.io

It is hardly a secret that the modern world is growing increasingly reliant on electronic devices and the semiconductor components that they are composed of. Without a steady supply of these chips, everything from banking to transportation and even national security would be severely compromised. Events in recent years — like the emergence of COVID-19 and supply chain issues — shined a light on how fragile global semiconductor fabrication pipelines really are, and just how serious of a problem that is.

Unfortunately, it is not a problem that can be easily solved. Bringing up a new fabrication facility is incredibly expensive and difficult, as the tooling and expertise required sets the barrier to entry at an extraordinarily high level. Yet the risks of having a small number of geographically-concentrated manufacturers are so great that we cannot wait decades before meaningful changes are made. New and innovative solutions are sorely needed to help us speed up this transformation of the present fabrication landscape.

A pair of researchers at MIT have recently proposed an idea that, while it is still in the very early stages of development, might provide some measure of relief. They have demonstrated a method that makes it possible to produce active electronic components — like transistors, for example — using a standard 3D printer and inexpensive materials. Such a system could allow for electronic components to be mass produced in a pinch without having to spin up a new semiconductor fabrication facility first.

The team did not set out to create a semiconductor replacement, but rather serendipitously observed that it might be possible. While 3D-printing magnetic coils, they found that a polymer material infused with particles of copper exhibited a huge increase in electrical resistance when a large current was passed through it. This effect was reversed when the current tailed off. The researchers recognized that this property could be leveraged to create transistors, which in turn can form logic gates, and many other useful active electronic components of the sort found in virtually all modern digital devices.

To test their idea, the team 3D-printed structures with electrical traces made of a copper-infused polymer material with intersecting conductive regions. It was then demonstrated that by controlling the current that is fed into the conductive regions, the resistance of the traces can be controlled. That, in turn, effectively makes the device operate like a switch — or, if you will, a transistor. These 3D-printed components were used to build devices that can perform control or processing functions, much like traditional semiconductors.

This is far from a replacement for traditional chip manufacturing techniques, however. The 3D-printed components are far larger, at the micron scale rather than the nanometer scale. Moreover, they do not perform nearly as well as semiconductor materials. These factors would lead to many issues with size and scaling, heat dissipation, energy consumption, and so on.

But for simple devices, this technique could be very useful, especially to the hobbyist that wants to fabricate a simple device at home. And with refinement, these techniques are likely to improve over time. The researchers are actively working to make that happen — at present, they are working to 3D-print fully functional electronic devices.