Division Director UES, Inc. Kettering, OH, United States
Development in stretchable electronics in flexible substrates, such as textiles and articulating/conformal devices, necessitates highly processable, conductive ink solution that exhibits robust electrical performance under varying amounts of strain. Classical solutions such as silver particle-based inks commonly flake and lose their electrical performance under large strain values and repeated loading. To answer these challenges in the FHE community, UES, Inc. has developed a suite of stretchable conductive liquid metal inks, ELMNT®, which can be processed on a variety of substrates via several deposition methods including but not limited to blade and screen printing methods. We have evaluated our ink solution in the FHE space and will present on the findings comparing ELMNT® to currently commercially available solutions. This presentation will highlight the development of ELMNT® ink including performance/technical details of this platform in both early lab level prototypes (i.e. flexible circuitry, data transmission, and heating elements in textiles) to manufacturable prototypes (stretchable data cables, soft robotics and sensing, and inclusion into the ELMNT® heated wearable line of products). We look forward to further development and incorporation of the ELMNT® ink as a solution to FHE technological gaps in flexible, stretchable electronics.