Human skin and hair can simultaneously feel pressure, temperature, humidity, strain, and fl ow-great inspirations for applications such as artifi cial skins for burn and acid victims, robotics, and vehicular technology. Previous efforts in this direction use sophisticated materials or processes. Chemically functionalized, inkjet printed or vacuum-technology-processed papers albeit cheap have shown limited functionalities. Thus, performance and/or functionalities per cost have been limited. Here, a scalable "garage" fabrication approach is shown using off-the-shelf inexpensive household elements such as aluminum foil, scotch tapes, sticky-notes, napkins, and sponges to build "paper skin" with simultaneous real-time sensing capability of pressure, temperature, humidity, proximity, pH, and fl ow. Enabling the basic principles of porosity, adsorption, and dimensions of these materials, a fully functioning distributed sensor network platform is reported, which, for the fi rst time, can sense the vitals of its carrier (body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and skin hydration) and the surrounding environment.

Large area environmental monitoring can play a crucial role in dealing with crisis situations. However, it is challenging as implementing a fixed sensor network infrastructure over large remote area is economically unfeasible. This work proposes disposable, compact, dispersible 3D‐printed wireless sensor nodes with integrated microelectronics which can be dispersed in the environment and work in conjunction with few fixed nodes for large area monitoring applications. As a proof of concept, the wireless sensing of temperature, humidity, and H2S levels are shown which are important for two critical environmental conditions namely forest fires and industrial leaks. These inkjet‐printed sensors and an antenna are realized on the walls of a 3D‐printed cubic package which encloses the microelectronics developed on a 3D‐printed circuit board. Hence, 3D printing and inkjet printing are uniquely combined in order to realize a low‐cost, fully integrated wireless sensor node.

Tunable, Flexible composite magnets for marine monitoring applications**

No abstract

A low-cost and additively manufactured 3D Antenna-in-Package (AiP) with quasi-isotropic radiation is proposed for a marine animals monitoring system. The antenna is based on a meandered dipole folded as a split ring resonator (SRR) structure, which can generate simultaneously a pair of orthogonal electric and magnetic dipoles, thus providing a quasi-isotropic radiation pattern. The antenna (integrated with a balun) has been inkjet-printed on a 3D-printed buoyant cone structure, which acts also as the system package to house the electronics and the battery. The antenna designed at 2.4 GHz is electrically small, with a = 0.49, and has a bandwidth of 70 MHz (2.9%). The measured gain deviation of the antenna (maximum to minimum) is near 3 dB in bandwidth, thus qualifying it as a quasi-isotropic antenna. Field tests of the antenna in the active state (integrated with the electronics) confirm a reliable communication range of 240 m in any direction in the azimuthal plane.