Recyclable Thin-Film Soft Electronics for Smart Packaging and E-Skins

TL;DR

This paper introduces an eco-friendly, recyclable thin-film conductive ink for soft electronics, enabling sustainable smart packaging and wearable biostickers with high performance and recyclability.

Contribution

It presents a novel conductive ink with high conductivity, printability, adhesion, and recyclability, along with a recycling process that preserves ink properties.

Findings

Conductive ink achieves 1.6 x 10^5 S/m conductivity.

Recycling process recovers ink with only 2.4% conductivity loss.

Stretchable electronics reach 200% strain with liquid metal addition.

Abstract

Despite advances in soft, sticker_like electronics, few efforts have dealt with the challenge of electronic waste. Here, this is addressed by introducing an eco friendly conductive ink for thin_film circuitry composed of silver flakes and a water_based polyurethane dispersion. This ink uniquely combines high electrical conductivity (1.6 x 105 S m_1), high resolution digital printability, robust adhesion for microchip integration, mechanical resilience, and recyclability. Recycling is achieved with an ecologically friendly processing method to decompose the circuits into constituent elements and recover the conductive ink with a decrease of only 2.4 per cent in conductivity. Moreover, adding liquid metal enables stretchability of up to 200 per cent strain, although this introduces the need for more complex recycling steps. Finally, on_skin electrophysiological monitoring biostickers along with a recyclable smart package with integrated sensors for monitoring safe storage of perishable foods are demonstrated.