High-Temperature Cu Ink Material and All-Printed Conformal Electronics

Each year, more than 60% of Cu is used in electrical applications due to its excellent electronic, thermal and mechanical properties. Here, we report the printable Cu ink material development for flexible conformal electronics, particularly high temperature applications. We demonstrate radio-frequency antennas through all-printed Cu features on flexible ceramic material, in which we achieve a reflection coefficient of - 60 dB at the resonant frequency of 2.5 GHz. In addition, all high-temperature electronics printed onto flexible ceramics also exhibit high sensitivity (0.05% °C−1) and accuracy (1 °C) for temperature sensing between 25°C and 600°C, satisfying the real-time high-temperature monitoring. Our findings show that Cu conductors printed onto flexible ceramics offer an opportunity to develop conformal high-temperature electronics with hybrid eco-friendly printability, providing new routes for manufacturing large-scale flexible hybrid electronics. In addition, flexible dielectric material with high thermal conductivity will also be discussed.

Bio: Dr. Shenqiang Ren is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Chemistry at SUNY-Buffalo, with research interests in emerging functional materials and devices. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park, and then served as a postdoc fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received 2015 National Science Foundation - CAREER Award, 2014 Army Research Office - Young Investigator Award, 2013 NSF EPSCOR First Award, 2013 Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship, 2009 Dean's Doctoral Research Award, and Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award at University of Maryland, College Park.