Nano/Micro Additive Lamination Fabrication: Novel Circuits Printing on Substrates

Dear Colleagues,

Aerosol jet printing (AJP) is a direct write fabrication technique, with high resolution, design flexibility, and integration capabilities. AJP is capable of printing elaborate material textures on complex, flexible, and stretchable substrates, like fabricating the subtle, intricate electronic and biocompatible sensors, bio-electrodes, antennas, LEDs, RFID tags, 3D interconnects, and even micro-coils for electronic packaging. Specifically, AJP possesses the potential to enable novel and efficient chip packaging solutions on ceramic substrates, such as low-loss micro-strip lines (MSLs) printing to achieve high connectivity, and multi-material microwave package printing with compatible passive and active components.

However, excellent circuits printing performances require material compatibility, process optimization, and fabrication reliability. Appropriate ink selection leads to excellent adhesion, wetting, and compatibility with the targeted substrate, fulfilling the electrical, mechanical, and thermal requirements. Moreover, ink features, like nozzle size, aerosol flow rate, jetting distance, substrate temperature, and relative humidity, largely affect the jetting, deposition, and curing processes, determining the printing accuracy and uniformity. Furthermore, complex geometrical and multi-functional circuits on ceramic substrates depend on the performance of reliable resistance, capacitance, inductance, voltage, current, etc. Therefore, printed circuit post-testing, such as annealing, sintering, and coating, is critical to evaluate the circuits performance, enhancing the fabrication reliability.

Hence, the Special Issue focuses on a collection of original and review articles related to ink technique studies, process parameter optimizations, and post-processing techniques for circuits printing on various substrates. Ingenious and initiative technique applications in chip packaging industry are also welcome.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• The ink selection with various suspensions and experimental investigations;
• Experimental and theoretical analyses on parameter optimization for printing performances;
• Mechanism analyses of printed ceramics substrates;
• The parameter prediction and optimization of process optimization with machine learning;
• Post-processing and testing techniques for reliability of circuits printing;
• Flexible and stretchable biosensors using AJP;
• Numerical modelling and mechanism analyzing AJP processes.

Prof. Dr. Feng Gu
Prof. Dr. Qingyu Yao
Guest Editors

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• smart process optimization
• surface engineering
• substrates
• nano/micro lamination fabrication
• chip packaging applications