A Review on Printed Electronics: Fabrication Methods, Inks, Substrates, Applications and Environmental Impacts

Abstract

Innovations in industrial automation, information and communication technology (ICT), renewable energy as well as monitoring and sensing fields have been paving the way for smart devices, which can acquire and convey information to the Internet. Since there is an ever-increasing demand for large yet affordable production volumes for such devices, printed electronics has been attracting attention of both industry and academia. In order to understand the potential and future prospects of the printed electronics, the present paper summarizes the basic principles and conventional approaches while providing the recent progresses in the fabrication and material technologies, applications and environmental impacts.

Photo-Sintered Silver Thin Films by a High-Power UV-LED Module for Flexible Electronic Applications

“…For decades, printed electronics technology has been developed with materials like metal nanoparticles ink, non-contact technology like drop-on-demand inkjet technology for printing materials on any substrate, and post-treatment process in order to obtain good properties from materials [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. In particular, a new frontier of printed electronics is to print flexible and stretchable electronic devices for wearable electronics [9][10][11].…”

Influence of Structure and Composition of Woven Fabrics on the Conductivity of Flexography Printed Electronics

“…PE is one of the fastest growing technologies in the world as it provides different printing techniques for manufacturing low-cost and large-area flexible electronic devices [1]. In recent years, flexible electronics technology has attracted considerable attention since it can be applied to wearable devices including flexible displays, flexible batteries and flexible sensors [2,3] in different areas such as aerospace and automotive, biomedical, robotics, and health applications [4]. Among them, wearable electronic textiles (e-textiles) are of great significance since they provide better comfortability, durability and lighter weight as well as maintaining desirable electrical properties [5].…”

Substrate Treatment Evaluation and Their Impact on Printing Results for Wearable Electronics

“…The latest developments in functional nanomaterials (both organic and inorganic) and their processing from solutions with the help of inkjet printing technologies have contributed significantly to producing flexible electronics. The reliable integration of printed materials, performance, efficiency, and durability of flexible electronics is determined by the quality and properties of the polymeric substrates (Huang and Zhu, 2019;Wiklund et al, 2021). Therefore, these substrates are desired to meet the specific requirements and withstand the chemical, physical and mechanical properties of the functional materials deposited on top of its surface (Malik and Kandasubramanian, 2018;Palavesam et al, 2018;Khan et al, 2019).…”

“…Functional nanomaterials available in the form of colloidal suspensions or mixtures of hybrid organic-inorganic nanocomposites are tuned to be efficiently used with the desired printing technology. Thin film deposition of functional nanomaterials through printing technologies requires a wide range of optimization parameters (Kamyshny and Magdassi, 2014;Huang and Zhu, 2019;Wiklund et al, 2021). The uniformity in thicknesses and coverage area of thin films, as well as the consistency in producing patterns with uniform linewidths are highly desired.…”

“…These acceptable printed results are achieved successfully through optimization of multiple approaches i.e. printing system parameters, rheological properties of the inks and finally the substrate treatments (Aleeva and Pignataro, 2014;Wiklund et al, 2021). Majority of the researches reported about optimization of printing technologies, focus on the manufacturing processes and rheological properties of nanomaterial suspension.…”