Abstract
An unusual strategy was designed to fabricate conductive patterns with high reproducibility for flexible electronics by drop or fit-to-flow method. Silver nanowire (SNW) ink with surface tension of 36.9 mN/m and viscosity of 13.8 mPa s at 20°C was prepared and characterized using a field emission transmission electron microscope, X-ray diffractometer, thermogravimetric analyzer, scanning electron microscope, and four-point probe. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) pattern as template was fabricated by spin coating (500 rpm), baking at 80°C for 3 h, and laser cutting. The prepared SNW ink can flow along the trench of the PDMS pattern spontaneously, especially after plasma treatment with oxygen, and show a low resistivity of 12.9 μΩ cm after sintering at 125°C for 30 min. In addition, an antenna pattern was also prepared to prove the feasibility of the approach.
Highlights
Recently, flexible electronics has attracted increasing attention, including batteries, displays [1], conformal antenna arrays [2], radio-frequency identification tags [3], electronic circuits fabricated in clothing [4], and biomedical devices [5], with new characteristics like large area, nonplanar forms, low manufacturing cost, disposable and wearable style, environmentally sustainable production methods, recycling, lightweight, lower energy consumption, and the integration of electronics as a part of other structures [6,7,8,9,10]
Etching silicon technology is widely adopted in the microfabrication of conductive patterns in flexible electronics [11,12,13,14]
Though the new technologies have shown great advantages compared with amorphous silicon technologies for flexible electronics, there still exist many problems, for example, some pollution and waste still cannot be avoided during screen printing, printer setups are very expensive, the defective products produced by these methods are hard to repair, etc
Summary
Etching silicon technology is widely adopted in the microfabrication of conductive patterns in flexible electronics [11,12,13,14]. This method involves a complicated process and much pollution. Though the new technologies have shown great advantages compared with amorphous silicon technologies for flexible electronics, there still exist many problems, for example, some pollution and waste still cannot be avoided during screen printing, printer setups are very expensive, the defective products produced by these methods are hard to repair, etc.
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