Developing Robust, high-resolution, high-performance and low-cost printing technologies for making flexible and stretchable electronics and devices

柔性、可穿戴、可卷曲和/或可折叠的电子产品或设备将给我们带来完全不同的用户体验，甚至改变我们的生活方式。制造柔性和可拉伸的电子产品和设备已成为先进制造的重要方向。材料和制造工艺的最新进展使得柔性电子器件/装置的许多新应用成为可能，例如，电子纸、弯曲屏幕、可折叠或可卷曲显示器、柔性太阳能电池、可调谐透镜、人造肌肉、皮肤传感器和用于健康监测的可穿戴生物医学装置。市场对柔性、印刷和有机电子产品的需求急剧增加。目前，全球市场超过10亿美元，到2016年将增长到450亿美元。 最近，材料或喷墨印刷已经成为以相对低的成本大规模生产大面积柔性和可拉伸电子器件的非常有前途的技术。喷墨印刷是一种通用技术，其以直接书写的方式将导电无机或有机材料放置到弹性体基底上的指定位置。尽管喷墨印刷技术具有许多优点，但目前喷墨印刷技术仍然面临许多技术挑战，例如印刷金属电路的低导电性、导电材料与基板之间的弱粘附性、与常规IC工艺相比的低分辨率以及导电材料和基板材料的有限选择。 在这个项目中，我们将开发新的喷墨打印技术，可以克服上述技术挑战，并显着提高印刷电子/设备的性能。例如，我们的印刷铜电路可以实现突破性的高导电率，高达75%的散装铜。我们的技术还可能实现突破性的高分辨率，从而可以打印高密度集成电路。随着许多应用程序的开发，该项目将显示出显着的好处，加拿大的经济和提供良好的培训机会，加拿大的年轻工程师。

Electronics or devices, which are flexible, wearable, rollable and/or foldable, will bring us completely different user experience and even change the way of our life. Making flexible and stretchable electronics and devices has become an important direction of advanced manufacturing. Recent advances in materials and manufacturing processes have enabled many new applications of flexible electronics/devices, for example, electronic paper, curved screens, foldable or rollable displays, flexible solar cells, tunable lens, artificial muscles, skin sensors and wearable biomedical devices for health monitoring. The market demand for flexible, printed, and organic electronics dramatically increases. Currently the global market is over $1B, and will grow up to $45B by 2016. Recently material or inkjet printing has emerged as a very promising technique for mass production of large-area flexible and stretchable electronics at relatively low cost. Inkjet printing is a versatile technique that places conductive inorganic or organic materials in a direct-writing manner to designated locations on elastomeric substrates. In spite of its many advantages, current inkjet printing technology still faces a number of technical challenges such as low conductivity of printed metallic circuits, weak adhesion between conductive materials and the substrate, low resolution compared to the conventional IC processes, and limited choices of conductive materials and substrate materials. In this project, we will develop new inkjet printing technologies that can overcome the abovementioned technical challenges and significantly improve performance of the printed electronics/devices. For example, the printed copper circuits by our technologies can achieve a breakthrough high conductivity up to 75% of bulk copper. Potentially our technologies can also achieve a breakthrough high resolution that allows for printing high-density integrated circuits. With many applications proposed to develop, this project will show significant benefit to Canada's economy and provide excellent training opportunities to Canada's young engineers.