Issue 6, 2023

Eco-friendly screen printing of silver nanowires for flexible and stretchable electronics

Abstract

Screen printing is a promising route towards high throughput printed electronics. Currently, the preparation of nanomaterial based conductive inks involves complex formulations with often toxic surfactants in the ink's composition, making them unsuitable as an eco-friendly printing technology. This work reports the development of a silver nanowire (AgNW) ink with a relatively low conductive particle loading of 7 wt%. The AgNW ink involves simple formulation and comprises a biodegradable binder and a green solvent with no toxic surfactants in the ink formulation, making it an eco-friendly printing process. The formulated ink is suitable for printing on a diverse range of substrates such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyimide (PI) tape, glass, and textiles. By tailoring the rheological behaviour of the ink and developing a one-step post-printing process, a minimum feature size of 50 μm and conductivity as high as 6.70 × 106 S m−1 was achieved. Use of a lower annealing temperature of 150 °C makes the process suitable for plastic substrates. A flexible textile heater and a wearable hydration sensor were fabricated using the reported AgNW ink to demonstrate its potential for wearable electronic applications.

Graphical abstract: Eco-friendly screen printing of silver nanowires for flexible and stretchable electronics

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
21 Okt. 2022
Accepted
19 Des. 2022
First published
20 Des. 2022

Nanoscale, 2023,15, 2767-2778

Author version available

Eco-friendly screen printing of silver nanowires for flexible and stretchable electronics

D. Shukla, Y. Liu and Y. Zhu, Nanoscale, 2023, 15, 2767 DOI: 10.1039/D2NR05840E

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