2019

Huttunen, Olli Heikki; Happonen, Tuomas; Hiitola-Keinänen, Johanna; Korhonen, Pentti; Ollila, Jyrki; Hiltunen, Jussi

<p>Stretchable electronics has attracted much interest recently because of its potential applications in the area of wearable electronics and healthcare. Highly elastic polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) has been for decades a widely used material in prototyping purposes. It enables the realization of a variety of mechanical and optical functions besides being a substrate for other processes or applications. As a substrate, PDMS enables high stretchability and easy integration of other parts made of PDMS. In this work, we demonstrated a high-volume production of stretchable electrical interconnections on PDMS substrates. We used roll-to-roll (R2R) rotary screen printing that has been conventionally applied in high-throughput fabrication of electronics on flexible, but not stretchable, substrates. We demonstrated silver interconnects whose conductivity remains sufficient for signal transmission, for example, in sensor structures under repeated 20% strain over 100 cycles. We also demonstrated R2R compatible PDMS encapsulation of electrical interconnections that increased the strain repetition durability by a factor of 2.</p>