No abstract

This paper presents a new temperature sensor, inkjet-printed with the in-house developed hybrid rGO/Ag nanoparticles ink (rGO/AgNPs ink). Its performance is studied, and the results indicate that its sensitivity is better than the commercial sensor. The meander—shaped electrodes were fabricated using drop-on-demand inkjet printer (Fujifilm Dimatix 2850 printer) on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. Compared to the sensitivity 0.0543 ?/oc of the sensor developed with commercial ink, the in-house developed sensor shows higher sensitivity 0.1086 ?/oc. Besides, the printed sensors exhibit its resistance increasing linearly with temperature from 30°C to 100°C. The bending tests results also prove that the characteristics of the sensors do not vary significantly, indicating excellent mechanical stability and flexibility. Therefore, the flexible inkjet-printed temperature sensor with the in-house hybrid rGO/AgNPs ink is recommended for the large-scale productions and implementations.

No abstract

Due to the challenging dispersion of graphene in aqueous media, organic solvents are commonly used in conductive graphene inks. This will result in safety issues and environmental pollution. In this study, we demonstrated a green approach of graphene ink preparation through one-pot synthesis reaction that produce a hybrid reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), with deionized water as solvent. The synthesized rGO-AgNPs was monitored using ultraviolet–visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy and fourier transform infrared (FTIR). A stable dispersion of rGO-AgNPs ink was confirmed through UV-Vis analysis. FTIR result showed the removal and the reduction in the intensities of absorption bands of oxygen-containing functional groups, which indicated that graphene oxide (GO) has been successfully reduced to rGO in the hybrid ink. The printed film of rGO-AgNPs exhibited a high conductivity of 1.50 × 104 S/cm, proven that the electrical performance of the hybrid ink has been improved as compared to previously reported GO-based ink. Printed into interdigitated electrode (IDE), the impressive characteristic of our hybrid ink performed well as a high-sensitivity flexible humidity sensor.

Inkjet printing is a promising technique for fabricating printed electronics. This technique acquires the utilization of conductive ink to form a fine and thin resolution conductive structure on a flexible substrate. The challenges are to design a stable conductive ink with a controlled properties to prevent nozzle clogging. Furthermore, a fine structure construction often demonstrated poor device performance due low mechanical durability. In this work, we have characterized morphology of the newly developed inkjet-printable nanosilver conductive ink (Mi-Ag) in our laboratory. The ink shows a stable colloidal ink zeta potential of-79.1 mV with nanoparticle size less than 100 nm properties has been tailored for compatibility with inkjet printing of conductive pattern on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate. It has been ascertained that the flexible electronic form factor affects the quality of the physical and electrical properties of printed pattern and the device performance. Hence, the bending test of the printed RFID patterns fabricated with different layer of thicknesses was investigated. Electrical properties of the samples were monitored by in-situ conductivity and resistivity measurement under cyclic bending testing. Pattern with thinnest layer of 1.31μm (1X) had the smallest electrical properties percentage drop (38.4%) at 12,000 bending cycles due to the fact that in thick layer, the interparticle network started to change during bending and became weaker due to the large amount of the particles in the dense printed layer. In contrast, printed device exhibited minimal increase in resistivity. Consequently the particle gap increased which allowed the movement of electrons, leading to the increased of electrical resistance. The device endurance characteristic is crucial to satisfy future design requirement of flexible electronic applications.