Solvent-free fabrication of eco-friendly all-carbon flexible paper electronics

Kanaparthi, Srinivasulu (2016) Solvent-free fabrication of eco-friendly all-carbon flexible paper electronics. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad.

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Abstract

There has been a huge demand for low-cost, eco-friendly and flexible electronics which find applications in numerous fields. Flexible electronics based on plastic substrates have been extensively studied in this regard because of their versatility. However, their fabrication involves expensive and energy consuming complex procedures and processing of eco-unfriendly materials which limit their use to certain specific applications. Also, these plastic substrates are not readily biodegradable which affect the environment and human health significantly. Thus there is a need to develop low cost, eco-friendly and energy efficient fabrication methods with biodegradable substrates to produce flexible electronics which can be used for applications in numerous ranges. The strong interest in this area has prompted the development of low cost paper electronics. However, conventional fabrication strategies of paper electronics involve usage of eco-unfriendly and time consuming toxic solution processing. To address this, we implemented a solvent-free approach to fabricate paper electronics which eliminate the usage of toxic solutions that affect the environment. Multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) pencil on paper temperature and infrared sensors have been implemented and excellent temperature coefficient and extraordinary responsivity were observed. Further, graphite on paper based field effect transistor was fabricated and it was utilized in human motion detection application through strain sensing. Further we implemented graphite on paper based touch sensor and demonstrated the application of it in keypad by interfacing it with Arduino to glow LEDs. The successful fabrication of these paper electronics without using any solvent indicates that this approach can be further extended to many fields where cost and environment are major concerns and size is not a constraint.

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