Water Transfer Printing Enhanced by Water‐Induced Pattern Expansion: Toward Large‐Area 3D Electronics

Le Borgne, Brice, Liu, Siyi, Morvan, Xavier, Crand, Samuel, Sporea, Radu Alexandru, Lu, Nanshu and Harnois, Maxime (2019) Water Transfer Printing Enhanced by Water‐Induced Pattern Expansion: Toward Large‐Area 3D Electronics Advanced Materials Technologies, 4 (4), 1800600. pp. 1-9.

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Abstract

Perfectly wrapping planar electronics to complex 3D surfaces represents a major challenge in the manufacture of conformable electronics. Intuitively, thinner electronics are easier to conform to curved surfaces but they usually require a supporting substrate for handling. The water transfer printing (WTP) technology utilizes water surface tension to keep ultrathin electronics floating flat without supporting substrate, enabling their conformal transfer on 3D surfaces through a dipping process. In many cases, however, the size of the microfabricated electronics is much smaller than the target 3D surface. This work proposes that such mismatch in size can be overcome by leveraging stretchable electronics in WTP. Stretchable electronics are compliant to in‐plane stretch induced by water surface tension, hence can first self‐expand in water and then be transferred onto 3D objects. Uniaxial and biaxial expansion ranging from 41% to 166% has been achieved without any externally applied tension. The results demonstrate that expansion‐enhanced WTP is a promising fabrication process for conformable electronics on large 3D surfaces.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions :	Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences > Electronic Engineering
Authors :	Name Email ORCID Le Borgne, Brice b.h.leborgne@surrey.ac.uk Liu, Siyi Morvan, Xavier Crand, Samuel Sporea, Radu Alexandru R.A.Sporea@surrey.ac.uk Lu, Nanshu Harnois, Maxime
Date :	7 February 2019
Funders :	Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), European Union
DOI :	10.1002/admt.201800600
Copyright Disclaimer :	© 2019 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Uncontrolled Keywords :	Conformable electronics; Large‐area electronics; Stretchable electronics; Surface tension; Water transfer printing
Depositing User :	Clive Harris
Date Deposited :	05 Mar 2019 08:26
Last Modified :	08 Feb 2020 02:08
URI:	http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/id/eprint/850660

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