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Arjun Seminar PDF
Arjun Seminar PDF
SEMINAR REPORT
SUBMITTED BY
ARJUN A (13402024)
October 2016
This is to certify that the Seminar report titled FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS is a bona
fide record of the seminar conducted by ARJUN A, under our guidance and supervision
towards partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Technology
Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the University of Kerala
during the year 2016.
Mr. Kumar G S
Assistant Professor
Dept. of ECE, SCTCE
SEMINAR GUIDE
Mrs. Subha V
Assistant Professor
Dept. of ECE, SCTCE
SEMINAR COORDINATOR
Dr. Sheeja M K
Head of the Dept. of ECE
SCTCE
2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the head of the institution Dr. Jayasudha D S for
providing me with the opportunity to complete this seminar. I would also like to thank Dr.
Sheeja M K, Head of the department of ECE for her valuable remarks for presenting this seminar
successfully. Also I would like to express my boundless gratitude to my staff advisor and
seminar coordinator Prof. Nelwin Raj and my guide Prof. Kumar G S for their valuable
suggestions which were imperative in the successful undertaking of my seminar.
Last but not least I would like to thank my classmates without their patience and support this
seminar would not have been successful. I would also extend my heartfelt thanks to my family
and well-wishers.
ABSTRACT
Thin-film electronics in its myriad forms has underpinned much of the technological innovation
in the fields of displays, sensors, and energy conversion over the past four decades. This
technology also forms the basis of flexible electronics. Here we review the current status of
flexible electronics and attempt to predict the future promise of these pervading technologies in
healthcare, environmental monitoring, displays and humanmachine interactivity, energy
conversion, management and storage, and communication and wireless networks.
Ever evolving advances in thin-film materials and devices have fueled many of the developments
in the field of flexible electronics. These advances have been complemented with the
development of new integration processes, enabling wafer-scale processes to be combined with
flexible substrates. This has resulted in a wealth of demonstrators in recent years. Following
substantial development and optimization over many decades, thin film materials can now offer a
host of advantages such as low cost and large area compatibility, and high scalability in addition
to seamless heterogeneous integration.
Contents
1.
2.
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 8
1.1
1.2
History........................................................................................................................................... 8
2.1.2
2.1.3
2.2
BACKPLANE ELECTRONICS................................................................................................. 12
2.2.1
2.2.2
2.2.3
2.2.4
2.3
2.3.1
2.3.2
2.3.3
2.4
3.
SUBSTRATE................................................................................................................................ 9
ENCAPSULATION ................................................................................................................... 15
3.2
3.3
4.
5.
APPLICATIONS ................................................................................................................................ 18
5.1
5.2
Healthcare ................................................................................................................................... 20
5.3
5.4
5.5
6.
7.
APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................................ 23
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................... 29
List of Tables
Table 2: The Design Principles of Dieter Rams From Braun. Adopted and expanded..19
List of Figures
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1
Flexible electronics, also known as flex circuits, is a technology for assembling electronic
circuits by mounting electronic devices on flexible plastic substrates, such as polyimide, PEEK
or transparent conductive polyester film. Additionally, flex circuits can be screen printed silver
circuits on polyester. Flexible electronic assemblies may be manufactured using identical
components used for rigid printed circuit boards, allowing the board to conform to a desired
shape, or to flex during its use.
1.2
History
Flexible electronics has a long history. Anything thin is flexible. Forty years ago
Single-crystalline silicon solar cells were thinned to raise their power/weight ratio for use in
extraterrestrial satellites. Because these cells were thin, they were flexible and warped like corn
flakes. Today, silicon-integrated circuits are thinned to become compliant so that the owner of a
smart card does not break it when we sit on it. Flexible can mean many qualities: bendable,
conformally shaped, elastic, lightweight, non breakable, roll-to-roll manufacturable, or largearea. The field has open boundaries that move with its development and application. In this
chapter we cover a newly emerging segment of flexible electronics that is largely connected with
active thin-film transistor (TFT) circuits. The development of flexible electronics dates back to
the 1960s. The first flexible solar cell arrays were made by thinning single crystal silicon wafer
cells to 100 m and then assembling them on a plastic substrate to provide flexibility. In the mid1980s, the active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AMLCD) industry started in Japan by adopting
the large-area plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) machines that had been
developed for a-Si:H solar cell fabrication. Since then, research on flexible electronics has
expanded rapidly.
2.
2.1
SUBSTRATE
Flexible substrates that are to serve as drop-in replacements for plate glass substrates must meet many
requirements:
(1) Optical properties Transmissive or bottom-emitting displays need optically
clear substrates. In addition, substrates for LCDs must have low birefringence.
(2) Surface roughness The thinner the device films, the more sensitive their
electrical function is to surface roughness. Roughness over short distance must be avoided, but roughness
over long distance is acceptable. As received metal substrates usually are rough on both scales, while
plastic substrates may be rough only over long distance.
(3) Thermal and thermo mechanical properties The working temperature of the
Substrate. Thermal mismatch between device films and substrate may cause films to break during the
thermal cycling associated with fabrication. High thermal conductivity may be important for the cooling
of current-load circuits. Dimensional stability during processing is a concern with plastic substrates.
(4) Chemical properties The substrate should not release contaminants and should be inert against
process chemicals.
(5) Mechanical properties A high elastic modulus makes the substrate stiff, and a hard surface
supports the device layers under impact.
(6) Electrical and magnetic properties Conductive substrates may serve as a common node and as an
electromagnetic shield. Electrically insulating substrates minimize coupling capacitances. Magnetic
substrates can be used for the temporary mounting of the substrate during fabrication, or for
affixing the finished product.
Property
Unit
Glass
Thickness
Weight
Safe bending radius
m
g/m2
cm
100
250
40
100
120
4
100
800
4
R2R processable?
Unlikely
Likely
Yes
Visually transparent?
Yes
Some
No
600
180,300
1000
ppm/oC
16
10
Gpa
70
200
Plastics
Stainless Steel
Permeable to oxygen,
Water vapor?
Prebake required?
No
Yes
No
Maybe
Yes
No
Planarization required?
No
No
Yes
Maybe
Yes
Yes
Electrical conductivity
None
None
High
0.1-0.2
16
Yes
No
Thermal conductivity
Deform after device
fabrication
W/m.oC
-
No
10
Three types of substrate materials are available for flexible applications: metals, organic
polymers (plastics) and flexible glass.
3. BACKPLANE ELECTRONICS
Backplanes provide or collect power and signal to or from front planes. Backplanes may be
passive or active. The ideal flexible active-matrix backplane should be rugged, rollable or
bendable, capable of CMOS operation, and should lend itself to low-cost manufacturing.
Todays TFT backplane technologies are best described by their active semiconductor, which
may be amorphous, nano crystalline, or polycrystalline silicon, a IIVI compound
semiconductor, or an organic semiconductor in polymer or molecular form.
3.1.2
Organic polymers are soluble, and small molecules can be derivatized to soluble precursors.
Therefore, OTFTs can be fabricated by solution processing near room temperature, compatible
with low-temperature plastic substrates. More recently, displays have been made on OTFT
12
13
3.2
Front planes carry the specific optoelectronic application. The front plane materials of displays
include liquid crystals for transmissive displays, reflective-mode liquid crystals and
electrophoretic foils for reflective displays, and OLEDs for emissive displays. The front plane
might also be an X-ray sensor, an image sensor, a pressure sensor, a chemical sensor, an actuator
or an artificial muscle in a smart textile.
3.2.3
OLEDs have wider viewing angles, faster response time, lower voltage operation, and possibly
lower power consumption than backlit AMLCDs. Because of their thin-film structure, OLEDs
are a natural choice for flexible displays. The two types of OLED materials are small-molecule,
with the higher efficiency, and conjugated polymers. Small-molecule OLEDs are usually
prepared by thermal evaporation, and polymer OLED by solution processing.
14
3.3
ENCAPSULATION
They are the external strength members which provide necessary protection. Single layer
metallic barrier encapsulations are commonly used. Transparent barriers are used for
optoelectronic applications. Multilayer composite barriers are used for more rugged applications.
Inorganic barriers are impermeable to atmospheric gases, but their performance is affected by
microscopic defects.
4.
FABRICATION TECHNOLOGY
4.1
Electronic devices and circuits and display panels are made by batch processing. Flexible foil
substrates, cut to sheets, will be the drop-in replacement for the rigid glass plates or silicon
wafers. Batch processing is the execution of a series of jobs in a program without manual
intervention. This is used when the numbers of steps are more and same material is made in bulk.
4.2
Large area electronics are fabricated using R2R processing. This is used when the numbers of
steps are less. Cost reduction can be achieved. This is a subtractive process i.e. materials are
deposited first and then patterned accordingly, so raw materials are wasted.
15
4.3
Additive Printing
It is a cheap, high throughput process. It uses raw materials effectively since it is an additive
process. Depositing and patterning occur at the same time. Patterned material is deposited only at
desired locations.
5.
DEGREE OF FLEXIBILITY
16
17
6.
APPLICATIONS
Figure 7: Next-generation flexible electronics systems and the key relevant sectors
Figure 7 shows the next-generation flexible electronics systems and the key relevant sectors, the
underlying materials, such as the industry pervading, historically relevant and standard
aluminium, silicon, germanium, and silver, as well as more exotic low-dimensional materials
including nanowires, quantum dots, and nanotubes, all of which will be necessary to facilitate the
development and the exploitation of disruptive applications in the fields of human interactivity,
computation, displays, energy generation, and storage as well as electronic textiles.
18
6.1
Throughout the 20th century, industrial designers have supported firms to ensure that new
technologies, particularly disruptive technologies such as flexible electronics, are embodied in
forms that can be commercialized. Earlier pioneers of industrial design, such as Peter Behrens, a
German architect who worked closely with Allgemeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft in the early
1900s, have helped turn radical new technologies into products for mass consumption. In the
mid-20th century, Dieter Rams formalized the design excellence principles, as outlined in Table
2, to guide the future generations of industrial designers.
Table 2: The Design Principles of Dieter Rams From Braun. Adopted and expanded
19
6.2
Healthcare
Flexibility in electronic materials is very attractive for medical and bioengineering. Living
organisms are intrinsically flexible and malleable. Thus, flexibility is a necessity for successful
integration of electronics in biological systems. One example is the bionic eye. Here a visioncompromised patient requires an electrically active addressable matrix array, with each unit or
pixel recording an image and transmitting this to the patient via the optic nerve. The bionic ear,
offers an ideal platform for flexible thin-film electronics. With a unique stiffness and geometry, a
thin film coupled together with pressure sensing arrays acts as a bio mimicking auditory system.
At a specific frequency and sound pressure, the basal membrane vibrates at a specific location
with predefined amplitude. A microarray pressure sensor can be activated for each specific
location, emitting a signal of known pitch and loudness, mimicking the incident sound. Further
applications of microarray systems based on such flexible thin-film technology are as a
facilitator for artificial noses and tongues. Sensory receptors in olfactory (nose) and gustatory
(taste) systems have a range of chemical receptors. Many of these receptors sense particular
chemical properties, including acidity, salt concentration, and enzyme affinity. The frequency of
neurons firing is often sensed in proportion to the magnitude of the taste or smell.
Figure 9: A bionic ear
20
6.3
Automotive Industry
Electric vehicles require unfeasibly heavy and large batteries to store equivalent energy as a tank
of fuel. As well as low energy density, batteries suffer from low power density (W/kg) leading to
electric vehicles with comparatively low performance when compared to equivalent fuel
powered vehicles. Advances in thin-film battery technology through the use of nanostructures for
enhanced energy density and hybrid super capacitor allowed increased energy and power
densities. Lightweight substrates, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and paper, have led
to a reduction in battery weight. Furthermore, recent developments in the structure of batteries
has resulted in their seamless integration within the carbon fiber frames of electric vehicles,
leading to significant overall weight and space savings.
6.4
Wireless Systems
Mobile devices offer almost seamless data connectivity, a state which is enabled by rapid
progress in wireless communication networks. Flexible and stretchable antennas have also been
demonstrated for applications such as clothing textiles, medical applications, and flexible RFID
tags. The key advantages of such antennas are their robustness, lightweight, and tolerance to
moderate mechanical strain.
6.5
Controllable insulation in residential and office buildings, in accordance with the seasonal
variations, can be achieved with smart window technologies. These offer single or multiple
functionalities, for example, controllable change in wavelength-dependent/independent light
transmission/ reflection, direct/indirect energy saving (e.g., blocking sunlight upon heating,
hence lowering air-conditioning energy consumption) and even energy generation (e.g.,
integrated PV modules). Building-integrated PV (BIPV) systems serve multiple purposes, giving
an advantage over conventional PV systems. BIPV modules do not require moving parts and fuel
and do not create pollutants over their life cycle.
21
7.
8.
DISADVANTAGES
Small lifetime
Complex manufacturing processes
Expensive
Increased heat dissipation per volume
Based on the current socioeconomic trends, some of the more likely technological future needs
are outlined and the potential exploits of thin-film flexible electronics in various market sectors
are discussed.
The novel properties of thin-film, flexible electronics such as low weight, mechanical flexibility
and durability, simple device integration, along with low-cost and large-area processability allow
them to be utilized in a wide range of applications from space exploration to water purification,
and from displays to conformally integrated automotive batteries.
Most of the present industrial development of flexible electronics is for flexible displays and Xray sensor arrays. Research laboratories are inventing many new flexible technologies that range
from elastically conforming sensor surfaces to electronic nets.
The task of the researcher is to offer the industrialist a choice of new applications and show the
path to them by developing the necessary architecture, circuits, materials, and fabrication
technology.
Future developments in flexible thin-film technology are likely to enhance the performance of
the devices discussed here, leading to more widespread applications.
22
APPENDICES
IEEE Based Paper
23
24
25
26
27
28
REFERENCES
29