Adaptive Printing of Conductive Microfibers for Seamless Functional Enhancement Across Diverse Surfaces and Shapes

Developing methods to non-destructively deposit conductive materials onto existing objects can enhance their functionalities on-demand. However, designing and creating such structures to accommodate diverse shapes and surface textures of pre-fabricated objects remains challenging. We report an on-demand printing strategy for creating substrate-less, conducting microfiber patterns that can be adaptively deposited onto a wide range of objects, including daily-use stationery, tools, smartwatches, and unconventional materials like porous graphene aerogels. Solution-drawn microfibers are directly deposited onto the object in a semi-wet state upon synthesis, enabling seamless fiber-object integration in a single step. The design and format of the microfiber patterns can be tuned on-demand to adapt to the shapes and surface textures of target objects, ensuring compatibility with user-specific applications. These air-permissive, highly transparent layers minimally obstruct the original appearance and functions of the objects while equipping them with additional sensing, energy conversion, and electronic connectivity capabilities.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42765-025-00561-6.