Abstract
The key challenge in fabricating a stretchable transparent electrode is the effective transfer of an electric conductor to a stretchable substrate. To this end, we used vacuum force to fully permeate the elastomer substrate into the electric conductor. The vacuum force was self-induced from the evaporation of the solvent in the electric conductor. Hence, a solvent, having a high evaporation rate, is postulated to exhibit superior fabrication quality. To demonstrate this, three different solvents were tested for preparation of the conductor slurry. In the test, the high-vapor-pressure solvents resulted in the superior quality of the fabricated stretchable electrode. Furthermore, the heating direction was changed during thermal curing to maximize the self-induced vacuum force. The plate-heating curing exhibited better transferring efficiency of the electric conductor because the evaporation of the solvent in the conductor slurry was accelerated faster than that of the thermal curing of the elastomer substrate. Besides the achieved high quality of the electrode, the fabrication cost can be drastically reduced because the extra process required to dry the electric conductor is omitted by simultaneous curing of the electric conductor and the stretchable elastomer substrate.
Highlights
Stretchable electrodes have received attention because of the increasing demands of flexible and stretchable devices, such as artificial skin and muscle, smart clothing, and electronic textiles [1,2].Stretchable electrodes are fabricated by patterning an electric circuit on a stretchable substrate.Poly-di-methyl-siloxane (PDMS) has been widely used as an electrode substrate because of its stretchability and biocompatibility [3]
We propose a fabrication method that, utilizes the flexibility of an electric conductor, and improves the adhesive force between the electrode conductor and the elastomer conductor, and improves the adhesive force between the electrode conductor and the elastomer substrate
The vacuum force was self-induced, without the use of any vacuuming devices, because of the of the solvent in the conductor slurry. This self-induced vacuum force can only be achieved via the wet evaporation of the solvent in the conductor slurry
Summary
Stretchable electrodes have received attention because of the increasing demands of flexible and stretchable devices, such as artificial skin and muscle, smart clothing, and electronic textiles [1,2]. In nanoparticle–polymer composites, metal powder filler is widely used as the nanoparticles because of its simplicity of fabrication and high conductivity [8] Another challenge in the fabrication of stretchable electrodes is patterning of the electric circuit, which has microscale dimensions. To overcome the cost issues, printed-electronics methods have been proposed because of their simplicity of use in the circuit-patterning process and cost efficiency [12]. We propose a fabrication method that, utilizes the flexibility of an electric conductor, and improves the adhesive force between the electrode conductor and the elastomer conductor, and improves the adhesive force between the electrode conductor and the elastomer substrate. This self-induced vacuum force can only be achieved via the wet evaporation of the solvent in the conductor slurry This self-induced vacuum force can only be transferring process demonstrated in this study.
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