Fabrication of screen-printed electrodes: opportunities and challenges

In recent times, wearable electronics, real-time sensing devices and point-of-care device applications have seen a surge in demand. This demand inherently calls for a more economic and reliable method of mass production. One such robust technique is screen printing that offers advantages in terms of being versatile, economical and easy to use. This technique has been proclaimed to be the best amongst the other additive manufacturing techniques by many research groups. This can be solely attributed to its simple equipment design, requiring a paste for printing purpose, a meshwork for housing the design and a squeegee to carry out printing through an up-and-down motion. This subsequently calls for optimising the parameters such as ink rheology, pore size of the mesh, proper choice of mesh design and motion of the squeeze in order to fabricate electrodes for desired purpose. Due to this technique’s immense potential to open up broad inroads in the domain of flexible electronics, whose concept has radically redefined the perception towards the field of electronics, a review article encompassing an elaborate description on the science and other quintessential parameters involved in this mass printing technique would prove to be extremely useful. In this purview, the review article is compartmentalised into sections encompassing discussion on the manufacturing of different kinds of inks for screen printing applications, substrates used, electrode design and pre-treatment procedures.