Fabrication and Characterization of Roll-to-Roll Printed Air-Gap Touch Sensors

Although printed electronics technology has been recently employed in the production of various devices, its use for the fabrication of electronic devices with air-gap structures remains challenging. This paper presents a productive roll-to-roll printed electronics method for the fabrication of capacitive touch sensors with air-gap structures. Each layer of the sensor was fabricated by printing or coating. The bottom electrode, and the dielectric and sacrificial layers were roll-to-roll slot-die coated on a flexible substrate. The top electrode was formed by roll-to-roll gravure printing, while the structural layer was formed by spin-coating. In particular, the sacrificial layer was coated with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and removed in water to form an air-gap. The successful formation of the air-gap was verified by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). Electrical characteristics of the air-gap touch sensor samples were analyzed in terms of sensitivity, hysteresis, and repeatability. Experimental results showed that the proposed method can be suitable for the fabrication of air-gap sensors by using the roll-to-roll printed electronics technology.