Electroluminescent structures printed on paper and textile elastic substrates

Abstract

Purpose

New types of substrates were used for fabrication of printed electroluminescent structures. Polymer foils mainly used as substrates for such optoelectronic elements were replaced with paper and textiles. Printing on non-transparent substrate requires elaboration of printed transparent electrode, while usually polyester foils with sputtered ITO transparent electrodes are used. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Electroluminescent structures were fabricated with elaborated polymer compositions filled with nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene platelets, dielectric and luminophore nanopowders. Structures were printed as “reverse stack”, where transparent electrode is printed on top of the last luminophore layer. For that carbon nanotubes and graphene platelets filled composition was used, deposited with spray-coating technique.

Findings

Main issue with new substrates is proper wetting with the use of screen-printing pastes, and much higher roughness especially for textiles.

Originality/value

Fully functional structures were obtained, but several disadvantages were observed that needs to be eliminated in further studies.

Citation

Sloma, M., Janczak, D., Wroblewski, G., Mlozniak, A. and Jakubowska, M. (2014), "Electroluminescent structures printed on paper and textile elastic substrates", Circuit World, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 13-16. https://doi.org/10.1108/CW-10-2013-0037