Abstract
Recently, three-dimensional (3D) printing has garnered tremendous amounts of attention in various applications. In this study, we suggest a facile means of creating 3D-printed foldable electrodes on paper via the direct printing of composite pastes consisting of conductive fillers and a thermoplastic elastomer. The 3D-printability of the prepared composite pastes is investigated depending on the rheological properties. It is revealed that the composite paste with a high storage modulus would enable the formation of highly conductive features with a resistance of 0.4 Ω cm−1 on three-dimensional paper structures. The mechanical bending/folding stability levels of the printed electrodes are evaluated to judge the possibility of realizing 3D-printed origami electronics. The resistance is changed slightly with a normalized resistance value of 2.3, when the printed electrodes are folded with a folding angle of 150°. It is demonstrated that the 3D-printed composite electrodes are applicable to various origami electronics, including electrical circuits, strain sensors and electrochemical sensors.
Highlights
When the pastes are printed on dense polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic substrates, conductivity exceeding 23 000 S cmÀ1 is obtainable based on percolation conduction
In (b), the diamond and inverted triangle indicate the linewidths for electrodes printed on 45- and 60 sloped structures. (d) Conductivity values of electrodes printed on PET and various paper substrates. (e) Time-dependent change in the resistance during the drying process at room temperature for electrodes printed on PET and regular A4 substrates
Using electrodes printed from highly viscous composite pastes, various origami devices were demonstrated successfully, including electrical circuits, strain sensors and electrochemical sensors
Summary
Two-dimensional (2D) printed electronics devices have attracted much attention, as a variety of active/passive devices are capable of being fabricated without the use of conventional vacuum deposition and photolithographic patterning processes.[1,2,3,4] As a next-generation technology, researchers have recently been attracted to three-dimensional (3D) printed electronics given the potential for various applications that cannot be realized with traditional 2D printing techniques.[5,6] A resin-bath-free, directly-writable 3D printing technique possesses an advantage over its counterpart methods because it does not cause any damage to the underlying electrical components, unlike micro-stereolithography (SLA), dynamic-optical-projection stereolithography and selective laser sintering processes. Conductive 3D-printable electrodes are formed on paper by regulating the rheological properties of the composite pastes.
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