Evaluation of Nanoparticle Inks on Flexible and Stretchable Substrates for Biocompatible Application

The flexible and stretchable electronic market is increasing particularly in the field of biomedical electronics. Widely used printed silver conductive tracks today are only eligible for on-skin applications. However, for biomedical applications fully biocompatible, flexible and even stretchable materials for device fabrication are needed. This paper presents an additive printing approach to fabricate flexible and stretchable electronics by using a biocompatible platinum material. Usually, in order to realize electrically conducting Pt-interconnects by inkjet printing, it requires a furnace sintering at prohibitively high temperatures, which are not compatible with thermal sensitive polymeric substrates. This paper describes a high-power diode laser sintering (HPDL) and a flash lamp annealing (FLA) as promising alternative sintering methods. Both processes are eligible whereas laser sintering showed slightly better results. Bending tests and adhesive strength tests of platinum printed inks on polyimide with up to 180 000 cycles, show that printed platinum is a suitable biocompatible material for flexible electronics.