“Clear Ballistics gel is a commercially available soft gelatine material, with ballistic testing as its primary market. The idea of creating a printing system for the gel was birthed due to the demand in the medical market for making anatomical phantoms for pre-surgical planning, medical research, education, and training; and was initiated by my advisor, Wenchao Zhou. In the course of our research, however, it became clear that the optical clarity of the gel could make it an appealing material for making soft and stretchable optics, which is an entirely new direction in the field of optics,” went on Udofia.
The research was done at the Advanced Manufacturing AM3 Lab, nestled in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas, a place Udofia has been working at since 2015 as a Ph.D. student, and which is equipped with Stereolithography and FDM 3D printers, CNC mill, multi-material 3D printers, 3D scanners, high-magnification microscopes and much more. The researcher also mentioned that a patent has already been filed on this technology by AMBOTS, a startup company spun off from the AM3 Lab last year.