A Review on Printed Electronics: Fabrication Methods, Inks, Substrates, Applications and Environmental Impacts (original) (raw)
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Innovations in industrial automation, information and communication technology (ICT), renewable energy, monitoring and sensing fields have been paving the way for smart devices, which can acquire and convey information to the internet, in every aspect of our lives. Since there is ever-increasing demand for large yet affordable production volumes for such devices, printed electronics has been attracting great attention in both industrial and academic research. In order to understand the potential and future prospects of the printed electronics, the present paper summarizes the basic principles and conventional approaches while providing the recent progresses in the fabrication and material technologies, applications and environmental impacts.
Review of digital printing technologies for electronic materials
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Direct printing methods have been used as manufacturing tools for printed electronics applications due to their cost effectiveness. In this review, the piezo-driven inkjet is discussed in detail since it is a mature technology and suitable for the production printing of printed electronics. In addition, other printing methods are considered for using higher viscosity ink and for producing smaller printed feature size. Various direct printing methods are compared in terms of jet mechanism, printing algorithm, and their applications. In particular high resolution printing methods using high viscosity inks, such as electrohydrodynamic jet, aerosol jet and micro-plotter are reviewed. To understand the recent status of industrial printing applications, display (liquid crystal display and organic light emitting diode) materials and printing issues are discussed. Finally, a brief overview of nano-particle metal based conductive inks is included because these inks have been widely used for printed electronics applications.
Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing of Printed Electronics: An Environmental Consideration
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Printing technologies have become a novel and disruptive innovation method of manufacturing electronic components to produce a diverse range of devices including photovoltaic cells, solar panels, energy harvesters, batteries, light sources, and sensors on really thin, lightweight, and flexible substrates. In traditional electronic manufacturing, a functional layer must be deposited, typically through a chemical vapor or physical vapor process for a copper layer for circuitry production. These subtractive techniques involve multiple production steps and use toxic etching chemicals to remove unwanted photoresist layers and metals. In printing, the same functional material can be selectively deposited only where it is needed on the substrate via plates or print heads. The process is additive and significantly reduces not only the number of manufacturing steps, but also the need for energy, time, consumables, as well as the waste. Thereby, printing has been in the focus for many applications as a green, efficient, energy-saving, environmentally friendly manufacturing method. This chapter presents a general vision on green energy resources and then details printed electronics that consolidates green energy and environment relative to traditional manufacturing system.
Journal of Materials Chemistry, 2010
Printed electronics represent an emerging area of research that promises large markets due to the ability to bypass traditional expensive and inflexible silicon-based electronics to fabricate a variety of devices on flexible substrates using high-throughput printing approaches. This article presents a summary of work to date in the field of printed electronics and the materials chemistry involved. In particular, the focus is upon the use of metal-and metal oxide-containing inks in the preparation of contacts and interconnects. The review discusses the challenges associated with processing these types of inks and ways to successfully obtain the desired features.
Printable Electronics: Patterning of Conductive Materials for Novel Applications
MRS Proceedings, 2004
ABSTRACTThe convergence of materials science, printing, and electronics promises to offer low cost and high volume production of devices such as transistors, RFID tags, wearable electronics and other novel applications. Although a number of “soft lithographic” techniques have been used to make these devices, they are slow and have a limited production volume [5], [14-15].Here high volume printing processes like rotary letterpress, flexography and offset lithography have been investigated for patterning conductive materials [1]. The synthesis and development of conducting inks using electrically functional polymers has been studied. The feasibility of using such inks in high volume printing processes has been studied. An attempt has been made to print conductive interdigitated electrodes using these inks to obtain uniform coating properties and appropriate electrical characteristics. Various process parameters like type of substrate, inking time and speed, printing pressure, printing...
Printing technology for ubiquitous electronics
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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyze the economics of various printing processes proposed for small-scale electronic products such as radio frequency identification tags, smart cards, and wireless sensors, and to present a new transfer printing method. Design/methodology/approach -The costs of several types of microstructuring techniques were calculated from commercial product data, along with a detailed spreadsheet simulation of inkjet printing for microelectronics. A new material for transfer printing was developed, along with suitable tooling for placing small and thin dice on flexible substrates. Findings -The cost analysis of inkjet printing suggests that it may not be substantially less expensive than conventional silicon technology for this purpose, while achieving inferior performance. Offset printing is cheaper but further from practicality. The new transfer printing process successfully prints very small silicon dice at high speed, and appears to meet the market needs with respect to cost, product performance and flexibility in readily producing different designs.
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Flexible plastic substrates are widely used in printed electronics; however, they cause major climate impacts and pose sustainability challenges. In recent years, paper-based electronics has been studied to increase the recyclability and sustainability of printed electronics. The aim of this paper is to analyze the printability and performance of metal conductor layers on different paper-based substrates using both flexography and screen printing and to compare the achieved performance with that of plastic foils. In addition, the re-pulpability potential of the used paper-based substrates is evaluated. As compared to the common polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate, the layer conductivity on paper-based substrates was found to be improved with both the printing methods without having a large influence on the detail rendering. This means that a certain surface roughness and porosity is needed for the improved ink transfer and optimum ink behavior on the surface of the substrate....
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New low cost, intelligent products with novel functionalities, e.g., sensors and simple displays have recently received much attention in the research community. For these types of products to come into everyday use, devices with reasonable electrical performance and negligible production cost are required. One way to reduce the manufacturing cost is to fabricate the electronics on inexpensive paper substrates by using roll-to-roll techniques ("Paper Electronics"), as an alternative to conventional electronics manufactured with batch processes on glass or polymer film substrates. The current work discusses printing of electronics on paper and demonstrates, as a proof-of-concept, a hygroscopic insulator field effect transistor device, a hydrogen sulfide sensor, ion selective electrodes and electrochemical pixels printed on paper with a custom-built roll-to-roll hybrid printer.
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Printing as a manufacturing technique is a promising approach to fabricate low-cost, flexible and large area electronics. Higher performance can be achieved with printed hybrid electronics.