A fully roll-to-roll gravure-printed carbon nanotube-based active matrix for multi-touch sensors

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2015 papers

Abstract

Roll-to-roll (R2R) printing has been pursued as a commercially viable high-throughput technology to manufacture flexible, disposable, and inexpensive printed electronic devices. However, in recent years, pessimism has prevailed because of the barriers faced when attempting to fabricate and integrate thin film transistors (TFTs) using an R2R printing method. In this paper, we report 20 × 20 active matrices (AMs) based on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with a resolution of 9.3 points per inch (ppi) resolution, obtained using a fully R2R gravure printing process. By using SWCNTs as the semiconducting layer and poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) as the substrate, we have obtained a device yield above 98%, and extracted the key scalability factors required for a feasible R2R gravure manufacturing process. Multi-touch sensor arrays were achieved by laminating a pressure sensitive rubber onto the SWCNT-TFT AM. This R2R gravure printing system overcomes the barriers associated with the registration accuracy of printing each layer and the variation of the threshold voltage (Vth). By overcoming these barriers, the R2R gravure printing method can be viable as an advanced manufacturing technology, thus enabling the high-throughput production of flexible, disposable, and human-interactive cutting-edge electronic devices based on SWCNT-TFT AMs.

Related Papers

• → A Novel Method to Guarantee the Specified Thickness and Surface Roughness of the Roll-to-Roll Printed Patterns Using the Tension of a Moving Substrate(2010)64 cited
• → Accuracy control for roll and sheet processed printed electronics on flexible plastic substrates(2022)15 cited
• → 6.1: Roll‐to‐Roll Manufacturing Considerations for Flexible, Cholesteric Liquid Crystal (ChLC) Display Media(2005)31 cited
• → Achieving specified geometric quality in a fully printed flexible functional layer using process parameters in roll-to-roll printed electronics(2022)6 cited
• → Precision Gravure Printing of Conductive Ink on Flexible Substrate for Printed Electronics(2012)2 cited