Interactive Bioplastics

Project Details
Project Name :

Interactive Bioplastics

Project Category :

01Digital Fabrication Technologies, Aditya, Featured Project, madalina, marc, marion, Steimle

Client Review :

(UIST 2022)

Description :

Interactive Bioplastics

A DIY approach for composing soft interactive devices from bio-based and bio-degradable materials.


Abstract

Designers and makers are increasingly interested in leveraging bio-based and bio-degradable “do-it-yourself” (DIY) materials for sustainable prototyping. Their self-produced bioplastics possess compelling properties such as self-adhesion but have so far not been functionalized to create soft interactive devices, due to a lack of DIY techniques for the fabrication of functional electronic circuits and sensors. In this paper, we contribute a DIY approach for creating Interactive Bioplastics that is accessible to a wide audience, making use of easy-to-obtain bio-based raw materials and familiar tools. We present three types of conductive bioplastic materials and their formulation: sheets, pastes and foams. Our materials enable additive and subtractive fabrication of soft circuits and sensors. Furthermore, we demonstrate how these materials can substitute conventional prototyping materials, be combined with off-the-shelf electronics, and be fed into a sustainable material “life-cycle” including disassembly, re-use, and re-melting of materials. A formal characterization of our conductors highlights that they are even on-par with commercially available carbon-based conductive pastes.

Video

Publication

Marion Koelle, Madalina Nicolae, Aditya Shekar Nittala, Marc Teyssier and Jürgen Steimle
In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST’22).


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