Printed electronics has been emerging as promising candidate in fields such as diagnostics or tissue engineering, with technological platforms giving feedbacks on biological samples or physiological processes, considering the recent attention for disposable and/or low-cost and reliable interface systems. Among printing methodologies, aerosol jet printing is an additive process that permits to deposit a wide variety of materials (conductive inks, dielectrics, nanotubes, epoxies, polymers, biological materials and more) on many substrates (e.g., metal, plastics, glass, paper, silicone) without expensive masks, instruments for thick-film deposition, or post-patterning techniques. This process consists of four key steps, i.e., atomization of the ink, densification of the generated aerosol, focusing of the aerosol, and deposition of the droplets on the substrate. First, the aerosol is generated, by using an ultrasonic or a pneumatic atomizer, according to the viscosity characterizing the ink to atomize. After generation step, aerosol is focused through a deposition head, in a way to form a continuous beam of liquid droplets, which is kept coaxial with an annular inert gas (usually nitrogen). This gas prevents the aerosol from being in contact directly with printer nozzle. Then, the aerosol can be deposited on both planar and even non-planar complex surfaces, thanks to its focusing system. The system Aerosol Jet Printer AJ 250 from Optomec Inc., permits to reach high deposition performances. For instance, printed track can have a width up to 10 um, whereas layer thickness can be as small as 100 nm.
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