The concept of printable electronics is an important enabler for mass customisation of electronics to create an internet of smart things that fuse form and function in new ways.
The most important shift that has occurred is the realisation that we should not try to beat silicon but instead, use it as part of our toolkit.
Photo by ZMorph
Soft robotics and prosthetics are other areas as well as custom smart patches monitoring your health.
Even stretchable electronics!
In the future, we see flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) systems becoming widely established where printed multilayer PCBs with thinned chips give rise to flexible, soft and even stretchable electronics.
Printing is significant because it enables on-demand fabrication on much larger areas and enables complex integration layer by layer.
This means that printing has the potential to become a valuable manufacturing technique for a multitude of electronics and IoT devices, all the way to flexible personal devices of the complexity of a mobile phone.
Importantly, we envisage that designing and fabricating such components will become simplified and accessible, enabling an accelerated path for the overall progress of electronics and the IoT.
Read the full article here: https://www.iot-now.com/2018/10/10/89117-printing-the-iot/