Key Lab of Cryogenics and Beijing Key Lab of CryoBiomedical Engineering, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
PLoS One. 2013 Aug 2;8(8):e69761. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0069761. Print 2013.
The current strategies for making electronic devices are generally time, water, material and energy consuming. Here, the direct writing of composite functional circuits through comprehensive use of GaIn10-based liquid metal inks and matching material is proposed and investigated, which is a rather easy going and cost effective electronics fabrication way compared with the conventional approaches.
Owing to its excellent adhesion and electrical properties, the liquid metal ink was demonstrated as a generalist in directly making various basic electronic components such as planar resistor, inductor and capacitor or their combination and thus composing circuits with expected electrical functions. For a precise control of the geometric sizes of the writing, a mask with a designed pattern was employed and demonstrated. Mechanisms for justifying the chemical components of the inks and the magnitudes of the target electronic elements so as to compose various practical circuits were disclosed.
Fundamental tests on the electrical components including capacitor and inductor directly written on paper with working time up to 48 h and elevated temperature demonstrated their good stability and potential widespread adaptability especially when used in some high frequency circuits. As the first proof-of-concept experiment, a typical functional oscillating circuit including an integrated chip of 74HC04 with a supply voltage of 5 V, a capacitor of 10 nF and two resistors of 5 kΩ and 1 kΩ respectively was directly composed on paper through integrating specific electrical elements together, which presented an oscillation frequency of 8.8 kHz.
The present method significantly extends the roles of the metal ink in recent works serving as only a single electrical conductor or interconnecting wires. It opens the way for directly writing out complex functional circuits or devices on different substrates. Such circuit composition strategy has generalized purpose and can be extended to more areas, even daily pervasive electronics.
目前制作电子设备的策略通常是耗时、耗水、耗材料和耗能的。在这里，通过综合利用基于 GaIn10 的液态金属油墨和配套材料，直接书写复合功能电路的方法被提出并进行了研究，与传统方法相比，这是一种相当简单易行且具有成本效益的电子制造方法。
由于其优异的附着力和导电性，液态金属油墨被证明是一种通用材料，可以直接制作各种基本的电子元件，如平面电阻器、电感器和电容器，或它们的组合，从而组成具有预期电气功能的电路。为了精确控制书写的几何尺寸，采用了具有设计图案的掩模，并进行了演示。揭示了用于 justifies 油墨的化学组成和目标电子元件的大小的机制，以便组成各种实际电路。
包括直接在纸上书写的电容器和电感器在内的基本电子元件的测试工作时间长达 48 小时，并且在高温下也证明了其良好的稳定性和潜在的广泛适应性，尤其是在一些高频电路中。作为第一个概念验证实验，通过将特定的电子元件集成在一起，直接在纸上组成了一个包括 74HC04 集成电路、10 nF 电容器、5 kΩ 和 1 kΩ 电阻器的典型功能振荡电路，其振荡频率为 8.8 kHz。
本方法显著扩展了金属油墨在最近的工作中的作用，使其不仅作为单一的电导体或互连导线。它为在不同基底上直接写出复杂的功能电路或器件开辟了道路。这种电路组成策略具有通用性，可以扩展到更多的领域，甚至是日常普及的电子领域。
