Printing practice for the fabrication of flexible and stretchable electronics

Recently, flexible and stretchable electronics have experienced tremendous surge due to their promised applications in fields such as wearable electronics, portable energy devices, flexible display, and human-skin sensors. In order to fabricate flexible and stretchable electronics, a high-throughput, cost-saving, and eco-friendly manufacturing technology is required. Printing, which is an additive patterning process, can meet those requirements. In this article, printing fabrication is compared with conventional lithography process. Practices at the author's group utilizing printing for the fabrication of flexible thin-film transistors, flexible hybrid circuits and stretchable systems are presented, which has proven that printing can indeed be a viable method to fabricate flexible and stretchable electronics.