Cellulose Nanofiber Composite Substrates for Flexible Electronics

Abstract

Flexible electronics have a large number of potential applications including malleable displays and wearable computers. The current research into high-speed, flexible electronic substrates employs the use of plastics for the flexible substrate, but these plastics typically have drawbacks, such as high thermal expansion coefficients. Transparent films made from cellulose nanofibers have low thermal expansion and thus the potential to serve as substrates for flexible electronics. Here we present the results of using a cellulose nanofiber composite substrate for flexible electronics. While the initial processing procedures need improvement to reduce the film surface roughness and composite thermal expansion coefficient, a working prototype was built and is reported here.

Citation

Sabo, Ronald; Seo, Jung-Hun; Ma, Zhenqiang. 2012. Cellulose nanofiber composite substrates for flexible electronics. In: 2012 TAPPI International Conference on Nanotechnology for Renewable Materials. 2012 June 4-7; Montreal, Quebec. Norcross, GA: TAPPI. 7 pp.