Flexible electronics featured by bendability and/or stretchability enable unconventional applications such as wearable devices and implantable biosensors, etc. Current methods of fabricating flexible electronics usually require vacuum, high temperature, and multistep processes. Our group has explored a facile approach for fabrication of flexible electronics at room temperature, which is enabled by photoreactive inks combined with a light projection printing technique.
Such approach is based on two of our recent findings: 1) photosensitive metal reactive inks permit the room-temperature deposition of metal nanoparticle layers onto flexible substrates; and 2) highly electrically conductive metal patterns can be printed facilely by irradiating the inks with light projected from the digital light processing (DLP) system.
Representative Publications:
Wang X, Cui K, Xuan Q, Zhu C, Zhao N, Xu J. Blue Laser Projection Printing of Conductive Complex 2D and 3D Metallic Structures from Photosensitive Precursors[J]. ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2019, 11: 21668–21674.