The DigiMan project developed innovative sensor platforms for agro-industrial applications by providing a digital manufacturing process chain based on printing technologies and nanomaterial inks. This makes it possible to miniaturize the sensors, to achieve a flexibility in the target sensor properties and to realize these sensors in economically low cost even for small sensor batch quantities.
The project utilized digital technologies for the sensors manufacturing, illustrating the benefits of a 3-D prototype philosophy (rapid, simple and cost effective). Envi-ronmentally friendly digital additive printing technologies like inkjet or aerosol-jet as well as drop-coating and laser machining made it possible to miniaturize the sensors sizes, along with a reduction in needed sensor power consumption. The applied technologies allow the customization of sensor properties and to realize this economically even for small sensor batch quantities. The equipment involved does not need expensive clean-rooms or vacuum technologies and is already introduced in the market. The software for digital design of manufacturing this sensor plat-forms is simple and has open access or free distribution on student level, which makes a significant contribution to the dissemination of the developed technologies and materials among future engineers by a reduced “price of entrance”.
Material developments lead to the application of self-synthesized silver, copper and platinum nanoparticle inks, which are compatible to inkjet and aerosol-jet printing (particle size control < 200 nm, variation of ink solid content up to 50 wt.-%, good sedimentation stability achieved). These were used for the resource-efficient printing of miniaturized heaters, antennas for wireless data transmission and functional sensor layers to detect humidity and temperature.
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