Evaluation of printed electronics manufacturing line with sensor platform application

The increasing demands in electronics manufacturing are driving the development of new manufacturing processes. Printing processes, such as gravure, flexography or inkjet printing, have emerged as novel manufacturing methods of electronics that also enable new type of applications to be designed. A clear benefit of printing is that the process is additive, i.e. material is deposited only on the areas where it is needed, which reduces material consumption. Utilization of several printing techniques allows patterning of large area circuitry with high throughput and down to 20μm line widths. The variety of functional inks for printed electronics is continuously increasing and includes e.g. metallic and organic conductive, dielectric, piezoelectric, and semiconductive inks. This paper studies the integration of suitable printing methods on a hybrid production line where the evaluation is based on a sensor platform application that consists of an antenna, organic transistors, printed conductors, printed keyboard, and a land pattern for an ASIC component. The proposed production line is a combination of different printing methods due to the requirements for throughput, accuracy, print thicknesses, surface roughness and suitability of available inks for different printing methods. The sensor application contains several different electrical interconnections that are formed on the hybrid production line. The electrical performance of the interconnections needs to be studied separately in order to find the optimal process parameters at the technology interfaces.