3D Printed Hydrogel-Based Sensors for UV Sensing Applications

Abstract

The development of additive manufacturing techniques to manufacture sensors rapidly and cost-effectively would benefit healthcare, environmental monitoring, food, and cosmetic industries. Because of the inherent complexity of sensing devices, new fabrication methods that utilizes recent advances in additive manufacturing to create sensors on a large scale efficiently are necessary. Techniques like 3D printing and 3D bioprinting enable printing different biomaterials into intricate 3D architectures that could serve as sensing platforms. This presentation will describe 3D printed hydrogel-based sensors’ development and optimization with incorporated receptor molecules and transduction interfaces for UV sensing1. To 3D print these sensors, an extrusion-based 3D bioprinter and a computer-aided designing software were used along with a novel bio-ink formulation. The bio-ink formulation contains nanoparticles with photocatalytic properties and degradable dyes dispersed homogeneously within a mechanically stable hydrogel network. The optimum hydrogel composite provides excellent mechanical properties to the printed sensors, enabling them for many applications. The proposed sensors are reagent-less and highly portable, making them ideal for wearable devices and printed platforms for portable bioelectronics. Apart from their ability to be used as wearable sensors, these sensors also have the potential to be used simultaneously with UV-based workspace sterilizing devices to guarantee that surfaces are adequately exposed to UV. The sensors are cheap, durable, robust, biodegradable, and simple to use. The tunable, biocompatible, and printable properties of the ink offer great potential for developing advanced 3D printing methods that, in addition to UV sensors, can be applied more broadly to fabricate other sensing technologies for various other applications.1. A. S. Finny, C. Jiang, and S. Andreescu, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 12, 43911–43920 (2020). Figure 1