Printed Electronics

Abstract

Additive manufacturing is becoming popular for electronics because of its lower cost, roll-to-roll (R2R) and sheet-to-sheet (S2S) printing capabilities, which can really boost the throughput. It is also attractive for wearable and flexible electronics because it can enable the realization of electronics on unconventional substrates, such a paper, plastics, and even textiles. For these reasons, printing techniques such as inkjet, screen, and gravure printing are highly suitable not only for existing applications such as radio-frequency identification devices (RFIDs), displays, and solar cells, but also for emerging applications such as the Internet of things (IoT). A lot of progress has been made in conductive inks and printing techniques and almost all the passive components such as antennas, filters, resonators, and interconnects (transmission lines) can be reliably printed. As far as the printing of active components through semiconductor inks is concerned, most of the reported work is for large-area electronics such as flexible displays and solar cells. These applications do not really require high-speed transistors, so the limitations of low mobility in semiconductor inks and the relatively large feature sizes of printed transistors do not affect these applications. Nonetheless, there is work going on to fully print high-frequency devices as well. This chapter presents an overview of the different printing techniques and ink-formulation of different materials, and it covers printed electronics applications in the fields of displays, RF electronics, sensors, and batteries.