Nematode worms given glowing shapes inside their bodies show how electronics can be directly 3D printed within a living organism. The technique could one day be used to create and maintain implants or computer-brain interfaces in humans.
Electronic implants are already widespread, from pacemakers to bionic ears, but inserting them into the body can risk infection and they can be difficult to fix if they malfunction.
Now, at Lancaster University, UK, and his colleagues have developed a technique that uses lasers to print conductive circuits inside living organisms.
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The team started by feeding an ink containing the fluorescent plastic polypyrrole into nematode worms (Caenorhabditis elegans). This ink is designed to work with a photonic 3D printer, which uses a laser to shape the material and turn it conductive. Using such a printer, the team created star and square shapes within worms.
鈥淗ypothetically, it will be possible to print quite deep inside the tissue,鈥� says Hardy. 鈥淪o, in principle, with a human or other larger organism, you could print around 10 centimetres in.鈥�
Objects have been 3D printed inside living organisms before, but this is the first time the technique has been used to make conductive circuits. They could have a wide range of applications, says Hardy, from biomedical settings, such as maintaining deep brain electrodes and brain-machine interfaces, to agriculture, such as printing electronic tags in seeds to prevent counterfeiting or in fruit to assist robotic picking machines.
鈥淭he approach is neat and may potentially be developed to build electronics, even with computation capacity, intertwined with the cells of living tissue,鈥� says at the University of Sheffield, UK. However, there is still a lot of work to be done before this approach can be used for devices like brain-machine interfaces in humans, he says.
Advanced Materials Technologies
