Recent Progress in Manufacturing Techniques of Printed and Flexible Sensors: A Review

Abstract

This review provides an outlook on some of the significant research work done on printed and flexible sensors. Printed sensors fabricated on flexible platforms such as paper, plastic and textiles have been implemented for wearable applications in the biomedical, defense, food, and environmental industries. This review discusses the materials, characterization methods, and fabrication methods implemented for the development of the printed and flexible sensors. The applications, challenges faced and future opportunities for the printed and flexible sensors are also presented in this review.

A Review on Printed Electronics: Fabrication Methods, Inks, Substrates, Applications and Environmental Impacts

“…As illustrated in Figure 2, researchers have reported passive, active and sensor printed electronic components [3,7]. While passive components are designed and manufactured based on electromagnetic properties of printed materials and shapes, active components utilize nonlinear behavior of printed materials, and sensors are designed based on the electro-mechanical features of the printed structures.…”

“…As the demand toward adding intelligence to the objects from our daily life has recently increased, the environmental impact of electronics manufacturing has reached to a significant level. Additive Manufacturing (AM) of these devices, e.g., by conventional and the state-of-the-art printing methods, relieves this impact by decreasing used (and wasted) materials and by allowing manufacturing to be completed without the need for etching and masking [3]. AM not only improves the resource efficiency but also reduces the fabrication costs since these manufacturing processes remain the same for both design prototyping and their mass production [4].…”

Biomedical Applications of Electromagnetic Detection: A Brief Review

“…Currently, the stability and reproducibility of biological detection are still poor due to the shortcomings of instability and variability of biologically active units. Nowadays, biological detection will inevitably be greatly developed with the rapid development of biology, informatics, materials science, and microelectronics [160][161][162][163][164]. It is foreseeable that electromagnetic detection will have the following characteristics in the future:…”

Optimizing Aerosol Jet Printing Process of Platinum Ink for High-Resolution Conductive Microstructures on Ceramic and Polymer Substrates

“…The most known traditional printing processes are lithography, etching, and sputtering [ 3 , 4 ]. However, the limited choice of substrate materials, the high cost, and the time-consuming manufacture of electronic devices led to the development of technologies such as screen printing, inkjet printing, gravure printing, and aerosol jet printing [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. These fast production technologies are an excellent solution for the manufacturing of organic light-emitting diodes, sensors, displays, and thin-film transistors [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ].…”