1. Roll-To-Roll Screen-Printed Silver Conductors on a Polydimethyl Siloxane Substrate for Stretchable Electronics
- Author
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Jyrki Ollila, Jussi Hiltunen, Johanna Hiitola-Keinänen, Pentti Korhonen, Olli Heikki Huttunen, and Tuomas Happonen
- Subjects
Materials science ,business.industry ,General Chemical Engineering ,Stretchable electronics ,Polydimethyl siloxane ,Nanotechnology ,02 engineering and technology ,General Chemistry ,Substrate (printing) ,OtaNano ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering ,Roll-to-roll processing ,020401 chemical engineering ,0204 chemical engineering ,0210 nano-technology ,business ,Electrical conductor ,Wearable technology - Abstract
Stretchable electronics has attracted much interest recently because of its potential applications in the area of wearable electronics and healthcare. Highly elastic polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) has been for decades a widely used material in prototyping purposes. It enables the realization of a variety of mechanical and optical functions besides being a substrate for other processes or applications. As a substrate, PDMS enables high stretchability and easy integration of other parts made of PDMS. In this work, we demonstrated a high-volume production of stretchable electrical interconnections on PDMS substrates. We used roll-to-roll (R2R) rotary screen printing that has been conventionally applied in high-throughput fabrication of electronics on flexible, but not stretchable, substrates. We demonstrated silver interconnects whose conductivity remains sufficient for signal transmission, for example, in sensor structures under repeated 20% strain over 100 cycles. We also demonstrated R2R compatible PDMS encapsulation of electrical interconnections that increased the strain repetition durability by a factor of 2.
- Published
- 2019
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