Electroluminescent structures with nanomaterials for direct printing of interactive packages and labels

Abstract

Packages and labels are necessary for every product on the market and are present among us for many years. Packages have to include every year more and more information, gain new functionalities and characterize with attractive design what can be achieved thankfully to printed electronics. Printed electronic structures made on labels (called smart labels) that were afterwards stick on packages can be found in literature, however there is still a lack in technologies and materials allowing direct printing of electronics on packages during packaging operations. This work presents a low cost method of producing electroluminescent displays directly on products packages without vacuum, cleanroom or other rigorous production conditions. Elaborated spray coating technology is suitable for mass production and can be easily implemented in production lines. Set of materials based on diverse functional fillers in polymer resins was developed to obtain desired coating functionalities. Conductive layers were done using carbon nano-tubes (CNT), graphene nano-platelets (GNP) and nano-silver (nAg). For dielectric layers we used barium titanate (BaTiO3) nano-powders and as luminophores copper doped zinc sulfide (ZnS:Cu). Presented structures were done on various types of packages - aluminum cans, cardboard boxes and polypropylene bottles.