Recent advances in materials and manufacturing processes pave the way for the establishment of piezoelectric materials via printing techniques as flexible sensors, actuators, and generators. Such flexible devices are key building blocks for future advanced robotic skin and conformable medical devices. Herein special focus is given to printed devices for its lightweight, flexibility, and manufacturing by high throughput techniques, offering a disruptive advantage in integration technologies and a wide range of opportunities for industrialization routes, where cost‐effective applications are required. In this Progress Report, the different system parameters are discussed, pinpointing the ones that affect the production of reliable flexible printed piezoelectric devices and limit this technology to achieve higher technological maturity. Focus is made on screen and inkjet printing as fabrication techniques and the well‐established piezoelectric polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐trifluoroethylene). Key limiting factors found for the manufacturing of robust scalable all‐printed piezoelectric devices stems mainly from the piezoelectric ink production and processing. Finally, the integration of these materials, via printing technologies, into soft, flexible, and even stretchable substrates is analyzed and insights are gathered on the manufacturing trends to achieve low‐cost production of flexible piezoelectric devices embedded in electronic skin and smart wearables.
Fully printed piezoelectric devices are important components for seamless integrated circuits. Here it is reported for the first time, inkjet printed silver electrodes on screen printed PVDF-TrFE polymer on flexible...
Wearable skin mountable devices, more than flexibility, require conformability, stretchability, and a high water vapor transmission rate, so that the perspiration processes are not blocked, to assure comfort and stability of use in contact with living bodies. Skin mountable stretchable devices with piezoelectric devices have been reported, based on the integration of polyvinylidene fluoride foils with discrete electrodes and stretchable substrates, and show potential in revolutionizing medical devices for remote monitoring applications. However, the electrodes and active layer are usually not stretchable, only the carrier substrate. The study reports the full description of a novel fully printed stretchable piezoelectric device, printed directly over a stretchable polymer foil of thermoplastic polyurethane. The stability of the response of the stretchable piezoelectric devices is used as movement sensors through their output potential. An electronic skin based on a fully printed circuit with a matrix of 15 all‐printed piezoelectric devices is prepared and investigated and used directly mounted on different body parts, and the real‐time monitoring of movements are recorded and analyzed.
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