Additive manufacturing (AM) offers the ability to produce devices with a degree of three-dimensional complexity and mass customisation previously unachievable with subtractive and formative approaches. These benefits have not transitioned into the production of commercial electronics that still rely on planar, template-driven manufacturing, which prevents them from being tailored to the end user or exploiting conformal circuitry for miniaturisation. Research into the AM fabrication of 3D electronics has been demonstrated; however, because of material restrictions, the durability and electrical conductivity of such devices was often limited.
This thesis presents a novel manufacturing approach that hybridises the AM of polyetherimide (PEI) with chemical modification and selective light-based synthesis of silver nanoparticles to produce 3D electronic systems. The resulting nanoparticles act as a seed site for the electroless deposition of copper. The use of high-performance materials for both the conductive and dielectric elements created devices with the performance required for real-world applications.
For printing PEI, a low-cost fused filament fabrication (FFF); also known as fused deposition modelling (FDM), printer with a unique inverted design was developed. The orientation of the printer traps hot air within a heated build environment that is open on its underside allowing the print head to deposit the polymer while keeping the sensitive components outside. The maximum achievable temperature was 120 °C and was found to reduce the degree of warping and the ultimate tensile strength of printed parts. The dimensional accuracy was, on average, within 0.05 mm of a benchmark printer and fine control over the layer thickness led to the discovery of flexible substrates that can be directly integrated into rigid parts.
Chemical modification of the printed PEI was used to embed ionic silver into the polymer chain, sensitising it to patterning with a 405 nm laser. The rig used for patterning was a re-purposed vat-photopolymerisation printer that uses a galvanometer to guide the beam that is focused to a spot size of 155 µm at the focal plane. The positioning of the laser spot was controlled with an open-sourced version of the printers slicing software. The optimal laser patterning parameters were experimentally validated and a link between area-related energy density and the quality of the copper deposition was found. In tests where samples were exposed to more than 2.55 J/cm^2, degradation of the polymer was experienced which produced blistering and delamination of the copper. Less than 2.34 J/cm^2 also had negative effect and resulted in incomplete coverage of the patterned area. The minimum feature resolution produced by the patterning setup was 301 µm; however, tests with a photomask demonstrated features an order of magnitude smaller. The non-contact approach was also used to produce conformal patterns over sloped and curved surfaces.
Characterisation of the copper deposits found an average thickness of 559 nm and a conductivity of 3.81 × 107 S/m. Tape peel and bend fatigue testing showed that the copper was ductile and adhered well to the PEI, with flexible electronic samples demonstrating over 50,000 cycles at a minimum bend radius of 6.59 mm without failure. Additionally, the PEI and copper combination was shown to survive a solder reflow with peak temperatures of 249°C. Using a robotic pick and place system a test board was automatically populated with surface mount components as small as 0201 resistors which were affixed using high-temperature, Type-V Tin-Silver-Copper solder paste.
Finally, to prove the process a range of functional demonstrators were built and evaluated. These included a functional timer circuit, inductive wireless power coils compatible with two existing standards, a cylindrical RF antenna capable of operating at several frequencies below 10 GHz, flexible positional sensors, and multi-mode shape memory alloy actuators
