Roll-to-roll printing points to fabrication of nano electronics

The low-cost process, developed by Purdue University researchers, is said to combine existing tools for manufacturing metals on a large scale, but uses the speed and precision of roll-to-roll printing to remove certain fabrication barriers in making electronics faster than they are today.

Future devices will require much smaller metal components, which calls for a higher resolution to make them at the nanoscale.

"Forming metals with increasingly smaller shapes requires moulds with higher and higher definition, until you reach the nanoscale size," said Ramses Martinez, assistant professor of industrial engineering and biomedical engineering. "Adding the latest advances in nanotechnology requires us to pattern metals in sizes that are even smaller than the grains they are made of."

This so-called "formability limit" hampers the ability to manufacture materials with nanoscale resolution at high speed.

Another drawback is that the method of fabricating internal metallic circuits generates circuits with rough surfaces that can cause electronic devices to overheat and drain their batteries faster.