Hortense Le Ferrand

Dr. Hortense Le Ferrand has developed, published, and patented several 3D printing technologies to fabricate easily customizable and high-performance multifunctional materials. 

At present, one technology processes one type of material to make one type of object, with an urgent need for multimaterial and multifunctional devices’ digital microfabrication methods. Le Ferrand’s technologies provide a solution to this need. 

Her innovation allows an additive manufacturing technology to produce microdevices with tailored performance, such as sensors, capacitors, and thermal interface materials. This allows the fabrication of a variety of multimaterial functional devices with only one technology, such as a pressure microsensor with embedded cooling capability, which leads to higher cycling performance. 

Another example is a thermal cooling material that extracts the heat from a source and drives it to a specific direction, which has high significance in 3D electronics. 

The technology is also able to process standard materials like reinforced polymer composites and ceramics, making the technology multimodal and adaptive.

Some of the materials created by the innovation include self-cooling mechano-sensors, strong ceramics, stiff yet morphing materials and strong, lightweight, and high thermally conductive insulating composites, which have applications in the advanced electronics, robotics, aerospace spheres and beyond.

The innovation represents the new technology necessary for the future of manufacturing and Industry 4.0.