Louis van der Elst, on behalf of the FAMES Lab, presented a poster discussing the uses of multimaterial fibers in bioengineering, proposing a novel solution for the real-time monitoring and feedback control of cellular tissue growth.
Our Vision is to incorporate Nano-device properties in macroscale products using multimaterial fibers as building blocks. Applying a new hybrid manufacturing approach, which involves 3D printing of multimaterial preforms consisting of semiconducting and metallic cores, thermal drawing of those preforms into fibers and axial patterning of the multimaterial cores by selective spatially coherent capillarity instabilities, we are able to produce integrated device arrays spanning the entire length of the fiber. The tremendous aspect ratio of the internal fiber features, kilometers long and submicron in cross section, have numerous applications. Being made of biocompatible materials, such as silica, silicon, and platinum, fiber devices could be used for bio-synthetic interfacing with living tissue, if arranged into 3D scaffolds.
