At Michigan State University have developed the first stretchable integrated circuit that is made entirely using an inkjet printer.
The material can be produced on a standard printer; it has a major potential cost advantage over current technologies that are expensive to manufacture.
“We can conceivably make the costs of producing flexible electronics comparable to the costs of printing newspapers,” said Chuan Wang. “Our work could soon lead to printed displays that can easily be stretched to larger sizes, as well as wearable electronics and soft robotics applications.”
The smart fabric is made up of several materials fabricated from nanomaterials and organic compounds. These compounds are dissolved in solution to produce different electronic inks, which are run through the printer to make the devices.
This discovery of the ink-fabricated stretchable circuitry was published recently in the journal ACS Nano. Wang’s co-researchers were Le Cai, Suoming Zhang and Jinshui Miao of MSU and Zhibin Yu of Florida State University.
