Roll To Roll Gravure Printed Electronics

Based on printing technology the roll to roll r2r printed flexible electronics market is further sub segmented into inkjet printing screen printing flexographic printing gravure printing and others nanoimprinting offset printing aerosol jet printing pneumatic printing and 3d printing.

Roll to roll gravure printed electronics.

Toward this goal we present roll to roll r2r gravure printed electrodes that are robust under a range of electrochemical sensing applications. The widths and thicknesses of the printed electrodes were investigated with respect to the printing angle and printing speed. Printing typically uses common printing equipment suitable for defining patterns on material such as screen printing flexography gravure offset lithography and inkjet by electronic industry standards these are low cost processes. Roll to roll r2r gravure printing is considered to be a leading technology for the production of flexible and low cost printed electronics in the near future.

This paper presents a novel method for printing thick silver electrodes with high fidelity using a rotogravure technique and high viscosity silver ink. Tremendous progress has been made towards the use of gravure printing in highly scaled electronics. To enable the use of r2r gravure in printed electronics the limits of overlay printing registration accuracy opra and the scalability of printed features with respect to the physical parameters of the gravure system including given plastic substrates and inks should be characterized. Roll to roll gravure printing is used to pattern source drain electrodes on plastic substrate while semiconductor and dielectric layers are printed by consecutive plate to roll gravure printing.

Physical understanding of the sub processes that constitute the gravure process namely filling wiping transfer and spreading is required to push the limits of gravure. Finally inkjet printing of ag organometallic ink is used to pattern the gate electrode. In addition the use of a low surface energy polyethylene terephthalate substrate was found to decrease the ink. Large scale roll to roll r2r micro gravure printing process was developed to deposit the electron transport layer etl using low temperature solution processable zinc oxide zno nanoparticle ink on flexible substrate for fabricating inverted organic solar cells oscs.

In this thesis gravure a printing process which offers the highest resolution highest speed and largest volume production in the graphic arts is demonstrated as a viable technique for printed electronics. Rolls with sub 5 μm resolution can be fabricated utilizing silicon microfabrication. In order to make laboratory scale research with this technique possible a custom table top gravure printing press was designed. Gravure printing is a very promising technique for printed electronics that combines high resolution with high printing speed.