Issue 6, 2021

Recent advances in printed flexible heaters for portable and wearable thermal management

Abstract

Flexible resistive heaters (FRHs) with high heating performance, large-area thermal homogeneity, and excellent thermal stability are very desirable in modern life, owing to their tremendous potential for portable and wearable thermal management applications, such as body thermotherapy, on-demand drug delivery, and artificial intelligence. Printed electronic (PE) technologies, as emerging methods combining conventional printing techniques with solution-processable functional ink have been proposed to be promising strategies for the cost-effective, large-scale, and high-throughput fabrication of printed FRHs. This review summarizes recent progress in the main components of FRHs, including conductive materials and flexible or stretchable substrates, focusing on the formulation of conductive ink systems for making printed FRHs by a variety of PE technologies including screen printing, inkjet printing, roll-to-roll (R2R) printing and three-dimensional (3D) printing. Various challenges facing the commercialization of printed FRHs and improved methods for portable and wearable thermal management applications have been discussed in detail to overcome these problems.

Graphical abstract: Recent advances in printed flexible heaters for portable and wearable thermal management

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
07 Dec. 2020
Accepted
03 Febr. 2021
First published
04 Febr. 2021

Mater. Horiz., 2021,8, 1634-1656

Recent advances in printed flexible heaters for portable and wearable thermal management

Q. Liu, B. Tian, J. Liang and W. Wu, Mater. Horiz., 2021, 8, 1634 DOI: 10.1039/D0MH01950J

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements