Additive Manufacturing of Sandwich-Structured Conductors for Applications in Flexible and Stretchable Electronics
Abstract
Additive manufacturing methods have shown great potentials to substitute the costly and time-consuming conventional subtractive methods in the processing of electronically conductive materials for applications in flexible and stretchable electronics. Herein, additive manufacturing of highly conductive, sandwich-structured conductors with high-temperature processibility and versatility in applicable substrates is reported. The sandwich-structured conductors with silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) as electronic conductors and polyimide (PI) as encapsulation are layer-by-layer deposited by aerosol printing into PI/Ag/PI composites. A high annealing temperature of 250 °C contributes to the high electronic conductivity of the Ag layer at 1.14 × 107 S m-1, which is in the same order of magnitude to the conductivity of bulk Ag at 6.3 × 107 S m-1. The high annealing temperature also significantly improves the interfacial bonding between the Ag and PI layers. For applications in flexible and stretchable electronics, the sandwich-structured conductors are transferrable to various substrates through a thiol−epoxy bonding process, including polystyrene (PS), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), Kapton, and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) thin films. The sandwich-structured conductors transferred to flexible and stretchable substrates exhibit highly retained electronic conductivity under deformations such as bending and stretching.
Recommended Citation
X. Yu and X. Gong and C. Podder and B. Ludwig and I. M. Chen and W. Shou and A. Alvidrez and G. Chen and X. Huang and H. Pan, "Additive Manufacturing of Sandwich-Structured Conductors for Applications in Flexible and Stretchable Electronics," Advanced Engineering Materials, vol. 23, no. 9, article no. 2100286, Wiley, Sep 2021.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1002/adem.202100286
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Second Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Research Center/Lab(s)
Intelligent Systems Center
Second Research Center/Lab
INSPIRE - University Transportation Center
Keywords and Phrases
Additive Manufacturing; Aerosol Printing; Conductors; Flexible Electronics; Polyimide; Printed Electronics; Stretchable Electronics
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1438-1656; 1527-2648
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2021 Wiley, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Sep 2021
Comments
This work is supported by seed fund from Intelligent System Center (ISC) at Missouri University of Science and Technology. This work is also partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. 1635256 and No. 1846673.