The Fluid Mechanics of Printed Electronics

There has been a massive growth in the area of printed electronics – where electronic circuits and devices are printed onto the supporting substrate using, amongst others, techniques such as inkjet or 3D printing. This has created new technologies such as wearable computing, sensor and diagnostic devices that integrate with humans and flexible and lightweight solar cells. This project is in collaboration with DuPont Teijin Films – a primary supplier of base film that is used as a substrate in many devices. The project is to better understand the optimum properties of the substrate to give long-lasting performance once the print is applied –in effect it is a study of the fluid mechanics of printing where the microscale properties of wetting and spreading of fluids over surfaces are key factors. This will be through a hybrid of experimental and computational work - using the Lattice Boltzmann simulation methodology that has proved effective in capturing molecular interactions of wetting and spreading together with experiments to characterise the material behaviour.

This project is in collaboration with DuPont Teijin Films who are keen to learn more about the downstream processing involving the base-film they produce, and from this create materials with enhanced properties. DuPont have extensive links into their supply chain and this will be a good opportunity to strengthen our research contacts in this area.