Water Transfer Printing Enhanced by Water‐Induced Pattern Expansion: Toward Large‐Area 3D Electronics
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.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 07, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1002/admt.201800600
Entities
People
- Brice Le Borgne
- Maxime Harnois
- Nanshu Lu
- Radu Alexandru Sporea
- Samuel Crand
- Siyi Liu
- Xavier Morvan
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- University of Surrey
- University of Texas at Austin