EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Digital printing technologies have attracted significant research interest during the last decade owing to the advancement of printed electronics and the progress on the synthesis of novel materials. In particular, the combination of additive manufacturing processes with conductive inks of 2D materials i.e. graphene inks, has been widely employed in a broad spectrum of applications from touch sensors and displays to chemical sensors and biosensors. We report our latest results on the site-specific and high-resolution printing of graphene inks onto conventional and flexible substrates using the Laser-Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) technique. Using single laser pulses, LIFT enables the deposition of graphene inks with high accuracy, while preserving the functionality of this one-atom thick carbon material after transfer as supported by structural and morphological characterization. To study the jetting mechanism and establish a printability map for graphene ink printing we also employ high-speed imaging that reveals the dynamics of transfer and associates the printing outcome with the different jetting regimes. This work, we believe, provides further insights into the jetting mechanism of laser printed graphene inks for printed organic electronics applications.