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The author describes the process of scaling up coating and drying technologies for the indirect or direct coating of platin catalyst on the membrane or to the gas diffusion layer. A state-of-the-art coating tech like slot die is being explained and the next tech development for digital fabrication of PEM fuel cells using a LIFT technology and laser drying are being explained. As a summary, the author shows how important standardization and inline quality controls are for further development stages of PEM fuel cells.

Electronic skin patches have emerged as promising platforms for various biomedical applications, including healthcare monitoring, prosthetics, wound care, stimulation, rehabilitation, medicine delivery, and human-machine interfaces. Advances in flexible and strechable supporting films and compatible functional materials have enabled conformal integration of sensors onto the skin, facilitating real-time monitoring of vital signs, pressure profiles, motion, and environmental parameters.Careful selection of all materials of construction as well as the geometries of the patch are critical to ensure the maximum durability of the end device while maintaining user comfort. This includes consideration of the thicknesses and moduli for mechanical matching of substrates, functional, and decorative material features. The chemical compatibility of these materials, and design considerations with regards to the interfaces to conventional electronic devices are also important to be properly engineered for mechanical matching. A multivariable design of experiments is necessary to optimize the final device bill of materials and design for reliability, performance, and comfort.

DECATHLON is committed to reducing its CO² impact by 20% by 2026. In order to meet this ambition, we started by actions like to reuse recycled materials or to reduce the weight of our components, but these levers will not be sufficient to achieve our target. We have no other choice but to explore disruptive solutions that break with standard technologies in order to respond to the climate challenge.This presentation aims to present the study of a concrete application of LDS technology on a headlamp product.
We will present first the Environmental evaluation of the LDS process to focus then on the Carbon footprint improvement compared to conventional technologie, without forgetting finally the technical and economic evaluation of LDS technology applied to the case study.

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Advanced Manufacturing of Electronics (AME) promises to be a disruptive technology for the space industry. With the aim of supporting low volume component needs, European Sovereignty, Sustainability and the move to green technologies (ESA Green Agenda), AME provides useful advantages for space: agile manufacturing with reduced procurement time, faster spacecraft development times, miniaturization, innovative complex designs, cost and weight reduction, and reduced environmental impact in the manufacturing processes. AME also offers the prospect of a European supply chain for electronics and components, contributing to strengthen the European industrial competitiveness. In this talk, the most promising AME techniques, innovative concepts and examples of applications will be described, as well as ESA internal AME roadmap

Medical device designs are constantly evolving as the trend to make passive devices functional is taking over the market space. Using additive dispense technology, one can print conductive traces, sensors,and markers on a variety of different medical device products.The direct printing system, Micropen, is a CAD/CAM driven capillary dispensing tool akin to an ultra-precise micro-dispense gun. If a material is flowable and can be loaded into a syringe, the Micropen can print it onto virtually any surface. It’s a non-contact, additive printing technique that dispenses the precise amount of material needed. This makes it beneficial when using novel, expensive or rare inks. The efficient use of materials and the ease of changing them provides product designers with increased prototype control as well as reducing time-to-market. Direct printing is an ideal way to form many different patterns on 2D substrates giving them superior electrical characteristics. However, the capabilities of the Micropen don’t stop at 2D substrates. Printers have been designed with 5-axis of movement. This allows many different medical device form factors to be printed such as thin, flexible,irregular, and highly three-dimensional shapes.This talk will provide an overview of the Micropen additive dispense integration with a variety of products in the medical device arena.

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The metallization of solar cells with the finest printed lines is one of the most demanding disciplines in the field of printed electronics. Finest lines which are smaller than a quarter of a human hair have to be printed on fragile silicon wafers with high throughput and without interruptions. The aim is to shade as little of the active cell surface as possible and at the same time to ensure high conductivity. Various printing processes can be used for fine-line metallization. In this article, the challenges of solar cell metallization as well as various innovative processes and current results are presented. A special highlight is the metallization of ultra-fine line contacts with a width of only 14 μm.

Additive manufactured electronics is efficient approach for the view point of capability of shape and speed, environmental friendly process. Since the process and material differ from common PCB manufacturing method, the important thing is that the part mounting technology will also be transformed and integrated accordingly. In the presentation, we’ll show the worldview of future electrical device manufacturing driven by additive manufactured electronics with the integration of SMT process and machine.

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Sustainable and rapid post-processing for high volume production

Smartization of existing or new products is a trend that is linked to Industry 4.0 and Internet-of-Things. There are several ways to integrate electronics into or onto 3D products. The combination of printed electronics for circuit layers and the assembly of rigid electronic components onto those circuit layers is one of the solutions that is getting a lot of attention nowadays. However, hybrid electronics (as the combination of both printed and rigid electronics) or structural electronics (as products aim to be 3D), needs adapted materials and processes to achieve functional conductive traces and interconnects. In this presentation we present the process of screen printing of conductive Ag-based inks on different 2D foils and the subsequent thermoforming of the same to achieve 3D circuit layers on which, afterwards, rigid electronics can be placed via the use of pick-and-place and conductive adhesives. Besides the description of the process, the different foils and different inks are discussed in this work and the properties of their combination for functional 3D products is discussed.

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Copper ink and electrically conductive adhesives for future PV production Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 will require a significant expansion of PV production capacities, accompanied by a drastic reduction of Ag consumption in solar cell metallization compared to today's standards. We demonstrate the application of new mentalization concepts for high-efficiency c-Si solar cells (TopCon and IBC) based on screen-printed Cu inks and investigate their performance and reliability. This screen-printed approach can serve as a drop-in replacement for Ag inks and drastically reduce Ag consumption and production costs for PV manufacturing. In order to realize lead-free solar cell connections and to facilitate the production of PV modules with temperature-sensitive cell concepts such as silicon perovskite tandems, we are also introducing ECA based cell-cell connections that use minimal amounts of Ag-filled materials.

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Additive manufacturing of electronics is experiencing increasing demand. Since neither molds nor printing forms are required, the integration of functional electronic components onto 3D objects by means of digital printing technologies such as inkjet, extrusion, aerosol and electrohydrodynamic printing facilitate mass customization. Due to a constant jet width over a large range, aerosol jet printing has the advantage to allow printing onto 3D surfaces without adaptation of the distance between the printhead and the object. However, existing aerosol jet printing systems require the printheads to be orientated in the direction of gravity, operate only continuously and thus need a shutter system to realize discontinuous structures. We develop a novel Aerosol-on-Demand (AoD) jet-printing system that solves the major challenges of digital printing technologies. The core of the patented AoD technology is a new method for aerosol generation from a point-like source within the printhead directly in a sheath gas flow, which hydrodynamically focuses the generated aerosol by means of the inner contour of the attached nozzle. Based on the results obtained by first experiments we implement a CFD model of the printhead. CFD simulations show the feasibility of the hydrodynamic focusing of the locally generated aerosol as well as the existence of stable operating points. Furthermore, the simulations lead to the design of a test setup. Experiments with the test setup verify that aerosol generation can be controlled on demand and thus printing of discontinuous microstructures is possible without ink loss and need for a shutter. There are no aerosol-conducting parts other than the nozzle, i.e. there is no dead volume and no material waste. The minimum ink volume and the cleaning effort are extremely reduced; ink degradation occuring in common atomizers is eliminated. In addition,after a short initial run-in period for the sheath gas no further run-in period is required for the aerosol jet. The aerosol mass flow can be controlled inline to provide a constant ink transfer rate over a wide range of printing speeds. Finally, the printhead can be freely rotated in space during the printing process. Thus, it is also possible to print on stationary components of complex 3D-shape. In conclusion, the novel AoD jet-printing principle shows great potential for applications in functional printing of 2D & 3D electronics