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Inkjet Printing of Soft, Stretchable Optical Waveguides through the Photopolymerization of High-Profile Linear
Aleksandra Samusjew1, Markus Kratzer1, Andreas Moser1
1Chair of Chemistry of Polymeric Materials & Christian Doppler Laboratory for Functional and Polymer Based Inkjet Inks, ‡Institute of Physics, and §Chair of Materials Science and Testing of Polymers, University of Leoben , 8700 Leoben, Austria.
Abstract:
Optical waveguides have been fabricated via photopolymerization of stable, inkjet-printed patterns. In order to obtain high-profile lines, the properties of both the ink and the substrate were adjusted. We prove that suitable patterns, with contact angles close to 90°, can be printed by using not fully cured, "sticky" PDMS as a substrate. In addition, we propose a simple sliding-drop experiment to show the crucial difference in how the ink dewets the "sticky" and the fully cured substrate, which is otherwise difficult to demonstrate. The light attenuation vs strain curve of the obtained waveguides was determined experimentally and was found to be almost linear within the measured strain range.
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