Advanced Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing of High-Performance Printed Electronics

该补助金解决了提高对柔性印刷电子产品制造的基本理解的需求。 柔性印刷电子产品在医疗保健、机器人、安全和分布式传感等领域具有巨大的潜力。然而，由于缺乏高效、可靠并能生产高性能电子电路的卷对卷制造工艺，该领域的增长受到了限制。 该补助金对该领域整体所需的制造基础进行研究，并用于特定的卷对卷增材制造平台，称为电子自对准毛细管辅助光刻或SCALE。 SCALE结合了压印光刻和喷墨印刷这两种工业上成熟的技术，为具有更小特征尺寸的印刷电子器件和高性能柔性电子电路所需的电子材料层对层对准实现了高吞吐量制造平台。 该研究将为电子，流体力学，材料开发和制造工艺提供基础知识，不仅影响印刷电子研究社区和行业，还影响多个领域和工业部门，如微流体，保形光学，软机器人和分布式传感。该研究团队汇集了电子材料和设备，制造，流体力学和建模方面的专业知识。 该研究涉及研究生以及K-12学生和行业通过外联活动。该补助金支持基础研究，以克服柔性印刷电子领域面临的巨大挑战，包括多种材料的集成，简化制造工艺的创建，以及现代电子产品的高性能要求的实现。 该团队将利用SCALE平台进行研究，了解和预测电子墨水的毛细流动和凝固，开发新的电子设备设计，改进卷对卷制造工艺，并探索柔性电子设备的加工、材料和机械性能之间的联系。 一个重要的目标是制造能够高频操作的设备，这需要精确控制电子材料的尺寸、分布和厚度。该研究包括油墨流动和材料分布的计算建模，以及阐明工艺基础和最终器件和电路性能的创新设计和实验。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This grant addresses the need for improved fundamental understanding of the manufacturing of flexible printed electronics. Flexible printed electronics has tremendous potential for a spectrum of exciting products in fields spanning health care, robotics, security and distributed sensing. However, the growth in the field has been limited by the lack of roll-to-roll manufacturing processes that are efficient, reliable and produce high-performance electronic circuits. This grant carries out research on the manufacturing fundamentals needed by the field overall and for a specific roll-to-roll additive manufacturing platform called Self-Aligned Capillarity-Assisted Lithography for Electronics, or SCALE. SCALE combines two industrially established technologies, imprint lithography and inkjet printing, to achieve a high-throughput manufacturing platform for printed electronic devices with smaller feature sizes and layer-to-layer alignment of electronic materials needed for high-performance flexible electronic circuits. The research will contribute fundamental knowledge in electronics, fluid mechanics, materials development and manufacturing processes, impacting not only the printed electronics research community and industry, but also multiple fields and industrial sectors, such as microfluidics, conformal optics, soft robotics, and distributed sensing. The research team brings together expertise in electronic materials and devices, manufacturing, fluid mechanics and modeling. The research involves graduate students as well as K-12 students and industry through outreach events.This grant supports fundamental research to overcome formidable challenges facing the flexible printed electronics field, including integration of multiple materials, creation of streamlined manufacturing processes, and achievement of the high-performance requirements of modern electronics. Using the SCALE platform, the team will conduct research to understand and predict the capillary flow and solidification of electronic inks, develop new electronic device designs, improve roll-to-roll manufacturing processes, and explore the connections between processing, materials and mechanical performance of flexible electronic devices. One important goal is the fabrication of devices capable of high-frequency operation, which demands precise control of the size, distribution and thickness of electronic materials. The research includes both computational modeling of ink flow and material distribution as well as innovative designs and experiments that elucidate the process fundamentals and the performance of the resulting devices and circuits.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.