Printed electronics is a technology which is used for manufacturing flexible electronic devices dubbed as next-generation electronics such as wearable applications. To commercialize them, it is important to guarantee their electrical performance under various environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. Moreover, flexible electronic devices usually undergo mechanical deformations such as bending and twisting, hence, it is necessary to observe the electrical performance of flexible devices under mechanical deformation considering both temperature and humidity. The effects of temperature and humidity on flexible printed electrodes, as an example of the simplest flexible electronics, under static deformation of bending and twisting are studied. Electrodes that do not deform are also strongly affected by temperature and humidity, and the increase in resistances of the electrodes with deformation is highest when twisting. The magnitude of static deformation does not affect the conductivity. The effect of line width is important for the twisting deformation. To commercialize printed electronics devices, the effects of temperature and humidity should be considered, with further consideration of the effects of mechanical deformation on the design of the devices.

Printed electronics devices are made of several sets of printed patterns. The quality or printability of the printed patterns determines the electrical performance of such devices. Moreover, control of the printability determines the reliability of such devices. Despite its importance, few studies have been reported for the measurement of the printed patterns to evaluate their printability. In this study, a measurement method is proposed for printed patterns, including the definition of the properties to be measured, and the related software is described. The proposed method measures the width, pinholes, and edge waviness and evaluates the printability of the patterns quantitatively. The proposed measurement method could be an efficient tool to evaluate and enhance the printability of printed patterns in printed electronics.

Register control of roll-to-roll printing system for printed electronics requires accurate measurement of register errors. The register marks used for the recognition of patterns position between layers have inherently defects due to low printability of register marks themselves, which brings out inaccurate register accuracy and consequently low performance of printed electronics devices. In this study, the compensation methods for the unrecognized or missing register data are proposed to improve the recognition and consequently the control performance of register accuracy in roll-to-roll printing equipment. The compensation methods using the prior data and the linear interpolation are proposed and compared with the case without compensation for the simulation as well as experiment. Only the linear interpolation method could successfully compensate the missing data and consequently improve the register control performance. We should apply the compensation process of the register errors to improve the register control accuracy in the roll-to-roll printing equipment.

The one of the most important issue in roll-to-roll gravure printing is increase of ink transfer ratio or printability. As the result of high ink transfer ratio or printability, we can assess the quality of the printed patterns. The rheological properties are the important factors for the printability of electrodes patterning. In this study, the rheological properties of conductive ink are controlled by adding the solvent. The inks with different rheological properties are used for the patterning of the electrodes of 100μm by gravure printing equipment. The various printing speed, which also affect the rheological properties of conductive ink, is applied and the printed patterns are compared for their width and aspect ratio. Decreasing in the ink viscosity as well as increasing in the printing speed decreases the printability in gravure patterning, which shows that the rheological properties are important factors for the printability of gravure patterning.

Recently, roll-to-roll printers are being developed actively by various research teams such as research institutes, universities and companies for the application of printed electronics. The printing methods that are widely used in the roll-to-roll printing equipments are gravure, gravure and flexo, which depend on the inks used and electronic devices produced. In general, a single printing unit of roll-to-roll printing equipment adopts only one printing method and this method is not changeable, which limits the application fields of the developed printing equipments. In this paper, the roll-to-roll printer, in which the printing unit has the novel design concept, is described.

Recently, a great deal of research is focused on the printed electronics. One of their mainly concerned products is printed RFID tag. RFID technology has attracted researchers and enterprises as a promising method for automatic identification, and they are expected to replace conventional bar codes in inventory tracking and management. The key to successful RFID technology lies in developing low-cost RFID tags and the first step in applying printing technology to RFID systems is to replace antennas that are conventionally produced by etching copper or aluminum. However, due to the printing quality variations, errors, and lower conductivity, the performance of the printed RFID antennas is lower than that of antennas manufactured by conventional etching methods. In this paper, the effect of variations in the printing conditions on the antenna performance is investigated. Three levels for each condition parameter is assumed and effect on the resonant frequency are examined experimentally based on orthogonal array. The most serious factor that affects the resonant frequency of the antenna is the non-uniformity of the edge and the resonant frequency is found to be lower as the non-uniformity increases.

Manufacturing of printed electronics using printing technology has begun to get into the hot issue in many ways due to the low cost effectiveness to existing semi-conductor process. This technology, with low cost and high productivity, can make it possible to produce printed electronics such as TFT, solar cell, RFID Tag, printed battery, and so on. In this study, apparatus of gravure-offset printing are developed for fine line-width/gap printing and the results obtained from the apparatus shows that it is possible to make around 20 micro-meter line-width/gap printing patterns. The roll-to-roll printing system for fine line-width printing based on primary experiment is presented. The printing results obtained from the system shows around 30 micro-meter line-width/gap printing patterns.

The distortion of printed pattern is frequently observed in gravure offset printing process, which can be a serious problem in printing process for printed electronics. The mechanism of pattern distortion is studied and the factors which affect the amount and shape of distortion are found using FEM. The amount and shape of distortion is influenced by material properties of the roller, thickness of roller, applied load, and so on. As the printing pressure increases and Possion ratio increases, the degree of the image distortion increases. And the increase of the thickness of rubber roller brings a large distortion of image, too. In some cases, the distortion of printed pattern can reach a few hundred micro­millimeters. The comparison of the experiment result and the simulation result shows good agreement in their quantitative tendency.