Rahul Panat¹, Md. Taibur Rahman¹, Matthew Schrandt², Michael Renn², Chintalapalle Ramana³; ¹Carnegie Mellon University, ²Optomec Inc., ³University of Texas at El Paso

In this work, we demonstrate the fabrication of sensor films using aerosol jet 3D nanoparticle printing. Various types of sensors such as strain, temperature, gas, and touch sensors are demonstrated. Due to the sintering porosity of the films, the strain sensors showed higher gauge factor and were tolerant to mechanical deformation, which enhanced their reliability during operation. In addition, we also demonstrated low-power laser sintering to fabricate Cu-CuNi films under a shroud of inert gas on a polymer substrate. Detailed microstructural studies using SEM, TEM, and SAED were carried out to understand the behavior of such sensors. Cyclic bending and twisting tests also show minimal degradation of performance of such sensors. The work demonstrates that printed electronics leads to new possibilities in fabricating advanced sensors.