Project 13

characterizing the conductivity of aerosold jet printed copper features on flexible substrates

(Drs. kevin walsh & dilan ratnayake, eCE)

Aerosol Jet printing is a maskless additive manufacturing solution that reduces the overall size of electronic systems by using nanomaterials to produce fine features and embedded components. The resulting functional electronics can have line widths and pattern features from 10 microns to several millimeters.  The system can directly deposit a wide range of electronic materials, including conductive and nonconductive onto any substrate. Also, this system provides a wide range of possible applications that include flexible electronics and sensors which can be manipulated to meet the user’s specific requirements. Figure shows some examples of narrow prints on different surface features. The focus of this study is to characterize the response of the copper nanoparticle ink (CI-006) in the Oven/IPL with varying parameters and measure the resulting conductivity. Using these results, a statistical model will be developed to show how the conductivity changed with Oven/IPL parameters using a linear regression model.

References

•        Ratnayake, D., Curry, A. and Walsh, K., 2021, June. Demonstrating a new ink material for aerosol printing conductive traces and custom strain gauges on flexible surfaces. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Flexible and Printable Sensors and Systems (FLEPS) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

•        Ratnayake, D., Curry, A.T., Qu, C., Usher, J. and Walsh, K., 2021, June. Characterizing the Conductivity of Aerosol Jet Printed Silver Features on Glass. In International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (Vol. 85079, p. V002T08A007). American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

•        Ferris, C., Ratnayake, D., Curry, A., Wei, D., Gerber, E., Druffel, T. and Walsh, K., 2022, June. Characterizing the Conductivity of Aerosol Jet Printed Silver Traces on Glass Using Intense Pulsed Light (IPL). In International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (Vol. 85802, p. V001T07A015). American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

•        Olowo, O.O., Zhang, R., Wei, D., Ratnayake, D., Jackson, D. and Popa, D.O., 2022, July. Aerosol Jet Printed Tactile Sensor on Flexible Substrate. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Flexible and Printable Sensors and Systems (FLEPS) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

•        Ratnayake, D., Curry, A., Qu, C., Wei, D., Gerber, E. and Walsh, K., 2023. Optimizing the Conductivity of a New Nano-particle Silver Ink for Aerosol Jet Printing and Demonstrating its use as a Strain Gauge. IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics.

•        Olowo, O.O., Wei, D., Ratnayake, D., Goulet, B., Curry, A., Sherehiy, A., Zhang, R. and Popa, D.O., 2022, July. PEDOT: PSS Polymer Aerosol Jet-printing for Robotic Skin Sensors. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Flexible and Printable Sensors and Systems (FLEPS) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.