Silver Tape: Inkjet-Printed Circuits Peeled-and-Transferred on Versatile Substrates

Authors: Tingyu Cheng, Koya Narumi, Youngwook Do, Yang Zhang, Tung D. Ta, Takuya Sasatani, Eric Markvicka, Yoshihiro Kawahara, Lining Yao, Gregory D. Abowd, HyunJoo Oh
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3381013
Conference: Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT2020)

Abstract:
We propose Silver Tape, a simple yet novel fabrication technique to transfer inkjet-printed silver traces from paper onto versatile substrates, without time-/space- consuming processes such as screen printing or heat sintering. This allows users to quickly implement silver traces with a variety of properties by exploiting a wide range of substrates. For instance, high flexibility can be achieved with Scotch tape, high transparency with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), heat durability with Kapton polyimide tape, water solubility with 3M water-soluble tape, and beyond. Many of these properties are not achievable with conventional substrates that are used for inkjet-printing conductive traces. Specifically, our technique leverages the commonly undesired low adhesion property of the inkjet printing films and repurposes these films as temporary transfer media. We describe our fabrication methods with a library of materials we can utilize, evaluate the mechanical and electrical properties of the transferred traces, and conclude with several demonstrative applications. We believe Silver Tape enriches novel interactions for the ubiquitous computing domain, by enabling digital fabrication of electronics on versatile materials, surfaces, and shapes.