Abstract
Conformable electrodes are essential for the development of flexible electronics or functional clothing, regardless of their application. Their reliable ability to transfer electric signals or serve as sensing elements in various conditions is vital for the advancement of wearables that will enhance our everyday life. In this research, we concentrate our efforts on the understanding of the influence of elongation and washing on roll-to-roll printed conductive electrodes of various shapes and materials. A large sample set provides data on the breaking mechanisms and how these affect the electrical properties of the electrodes. In addition, the physicochemical analysis offers insights into the electrodes’ and materials’ behavior in extreme conditions during elongation and washing cycles. The achieved results indicate auspicious nanoparticle shapes and sizes as well as evidence regarding micro-scale breaking mechanisms responsible for electrodes degradation. Utilization of commercially available materials and roll-to-roll printing techniques allow the seamless application of achieved results and the creation of more reliable, flexible electronic devices.
Highlights
In the era of ubiquitous electronics devices, their flexibility and adaptability to our everyday life is becoming critical[1]
Flexible electronics creates a new paradigm where one of the elements of the system is exposed to stress conditions as elongation, bending, or squeezing[2]
Compared to conventional “rigid” electronics, flexible one offers extraordinary applications and new ways of integration strongly supporting the concept of e-clothing and Internet of Things (IoT)[3]
Summary
In the era of ubiquitous electronics devices, their flexibility and adaptability to our everyday life is becoming critical[1]. The flexibility is appealing for energy-harvesting applications[12,13], allowing the implementation of various energy harvesting methods like indoor and outdoor photovoltaic[13,14,15,16,17], thermoelectric[18], or mechanical[19] methods Another important aspect is the energy storage systems[20,21], where batteries or supercapacitors, besides being flexible, provide sufficient energy storage to supply the desired portable sub-systems. A significant amount of research has been conducted to identify, understand, and mitigate the breaking mechanisms responsible for low reliability of printed flexible conductive lines[46,47,48,49]. To ensure full applicability of the fabricated electrodes, besides elongation cycling, we investigated their ability to withstand the washing cycling This is especially important because washing involves a number of mechanical factors that affect the electrodes such as abrasion, stretching, shearing, bending, flexing, and soaking[56]. We performed a physicochemical analysis of the printed electrodes to understand the breaking mechanism and significance of both elongation and washing on the performance of the electrodes
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