University of Tennessee‘s Anming Hu, Southeast University‘s Rhou-Zhou Li and and colleagues are printing conductive ink on paper to create low cost, lightweight, foldable, paper based sensors. The devices, which can be made or used anywhere, respond to touch or specific molecules, such as glucose. Current paper-based diagnostic and DNA tests require complicated, expensive manufacturing.

A pattern of silver nanowire ink is printed on paper in a few minutes and hardened with the light of a camera flash. The resulting sensor responds to touch even when curved, folded and unfolded 15 times, and rolled and unrolled 5,000 times.