Properties and applications of electrically conductivethermoplastics for additive manufacturing of sensors

In consequence of the growing diversity of materials in the fused deposition modeling 3D printing technique, electrically conductive materials are commercially available. In this work two filaments based on thermoplastics filled with carbon or metal nanoparticles are analyzed in terms of their electrical conductance. The printing parameters to process the materials with the 3D printer are optimized with the design of experiments (DoE) method. A model to calculate the resistance of such 3D printed structures is presented and a demonstrator as a proof of concept was 3D printed based on these results. In addition, 3D printing of capacitors is investigated.