Technological Integration in Printed Electronics

Abstract

Conventional electronics requires the use of numerous deposition techniques (e.g. chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, and photolithography) with demanding conditions like ultra-high vacuum, elevated temperature and clean room facilities. In the last decades, printed electronics (PE) has proved the use of standard printing techniques to develop electronic devices with new features such as, large area fabrication, mechanical flexibility, environmental friendliness and-potentially-cost effectiveness. This kind of devices is especially interesting for the popular concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which the number of employed electronic devices increases massively. Because of this trend, the cost and environmental impact are gradually becoming a substantial issue. One of the main technological barriers to overcome for PE to be a real competitor in this context, however, is the integration of these non-conventional techniques between each other and the embedding of these devices in standard electronics. This chapter summarizes the advances made in this direction, focusing on the use of different techniques in one process flow and the integration of printed electronics with conventional systems.

Aerosol Jet Printing of Silver Lines with A High Aspect Ratio on A Heated Silicon Substrate

“…The modernization of the aerosol jet printer was to provide controlled heating of the substrate in the process of aerosol printing using heating plate in the temperature range from 25 to 500 • C. The experimental setup, including a modernized aerosol jet printer for the deposition of silver lines on a heated silicon substrate, is shown in Figure 1. Schematic of an experimental setup for focused deposition of aerosol particles on a heated silicon substrate (a); An example of a cross-sectional profile of a silver line, measured with an optical profilometer, where the measured thickness t, width W and aspect ratio AR of the line are~67 µm, 4 3 µm and 0.64, respectively. The characteristic lengths of the formed lines in the experiments ranged from 10 to 30 mm.…”

“…Currently, there is great interest in the manufacture of low-cost electronic devices using printing technologies [1,2]. The use of these technologies allows the formation of active and passive components by direct deposition of functional materials in the form of nanoparticles on the surface of the substrate without the use of expensive photolithographic masks and stencils [3][4][5][6]. Among the existing printing methods, aerosol jet printing is the most promising technology because it allows the formation of functional elements with a minimum lateral size of up to 10 microns [7][8][9] both on flat and curved substrates [10,11].…”

Recent Advances in Printed Capacitive Sensors

“…Spray deposition is inherently a coating technique, which can easily be adapted to define patterns by using a shadow mask [43]. Spray deposition consists of the definition of a material, normally, in liquid form through a gas stream.…”

Facile manufacturing of sub-mm thick CNT-based RC filters

“…The result ultimately is a material with outstanding properties that can be brought quickly into solution, which facilitates their use in processing techniques commonly employed in emerging technologies. Such techniques have inherent advantages in comparison to conventional silicon-based processes in terms of processing condition, resulting features and potential throughput [7].…”