Screen-Printed Resistive Pressure Sensors Containing Graphene Nanoplatelets and Carbon Nanotubes

Polymer composites with nanomaterials such as graphene nanoplatelets and carbon nanotubes are a new group of materials with high application possibilities in printed and flexible electronics. In this study such carbon nanomaterials were used as a conductive phase in polymer composites. Pastes with dispersed nanomaterials in PMMA and PVDF vehicles were screen printed on flexible substrates, and used as an active layer in pressure sensors, exploiting contact resistance phenomena. The relationship between resistance and pressure is nearly linear on a logarithmic scale for selected types of samples, and their response is several times higher than for similar sensors with graphite layers. The use of surfactants allowed us to fabricate evenly dispersed nanomaterials with different amount of nanoplatelets and nanotubes in the composites. The samples contained from 1.25 wt.% to 2 wt.% of graphene and 1 wt.% to 0.5 wt.% of nanotubes and exhibited diverse sheet resistivity. Experiments revealed the relationship between morphology and loading of functional phase in the polymer matrix and the sensors’ sensitivity

A Method Of Calculating Thermal Diffusivity And Conductivity For Irregularly Shaped Specimens In Laser Flash Analysis

The Low Temperature Joining Technique (LTJT) using silver compounds enables to significantly increase the thermal conductivity between joined elements, which is much higher than for soldered joints. However, it also makes difficult to measure the thermal conductivity of the joint. The Laser Flash Analysis (LFA) is a non-intrusive method of measuring the temperature rise of one surface of a specimen after excitation with a laser pulse of its other surface. The main limitation of the LFA method is its standard computer software, which assumes the dimensions of a bonded component to be similar to those of the substrate, because it uses the standard Parker’s formula dedicated for one-dimensional heat flow. In the paper a special design of measured specimen was proposed, consisting of two copper plates of different size joined with the sintered silver layer. It was shown that heat properties of these specimens can also be measured after modifying the LFA method. The authors adapted these specimens by masking the false heat signal sourced from the uncovered plate area. Another adaptation was introducing a correcting factor of the heat travel distance, which was calculated with heat-flow simulations and placed into the Parker’s formula. The heat-flow simulated data were compared with the real LFA measurement results, which enabled estimation of the joint properties, e.g. its porosity