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UV Curable Conductive Ink for the Fabrication of Textile-Based Conductive Circuits and Wearable UHF RFID Tags
journal contribution
posted on 2019-07-22, 12:34 authored by Hong Hong, Jiyong Hu, Xiong YanTextile is a kind
of emerging substrate for wearable printed electronics to realize
recyclable smart products by versatile and low-cost screen printing.
The high temperature sintering step is necessary to get high
surface electrical conductivity, whereas most of the common fabrics
have poor temperature endurance. Meanwhile, both rough surface and
porous structure of fabrics are not beneficial to obtain high-resolution
and high-quality circuits. In this work, the ultraviolet (UV) curable
conductive inks with low-temperature and short-time curing were developed
for screen-printing e-textiles, and the rheological behavior of conductive
inks with different polymer contents was characterized in order to
determine the ink formulation suitable for screen printing on fabrics.
To demonstrate the usability of the developed ink in fabricating e-textiles,
the conductive lines with different widths as well as the antenna
for UHF RFID tags were screen-printed on plain nylon-woven fabrics.
The geometric morphology and the electrical properties of the printed
conductive lines were evaluated. The results showed that the screen-printed
conductive lines have a minimum line width of 0.2 mm, highest conductivity
of 6.02 × 106 S m–1, and good bending
endurance at a bending radius of 5 mm. Also, the feasibility of UV
curable conductive ink for a fabric-based electronic device was confirmed
by the screen-printed antenna of UHF RFID tags, and the reading distance
after five cycles of washing is still over 3.0 m. Generally, this
work developed a kind of low-temperature curing ink characterized
by direct screen printing on common fabrics and high electrical conductivity
after curing, and it will facilitate the use of textiles as the screen-printed
substrates for flexible and wearable electronic devices.