Additive manufacturing towards electronically-active surfaces
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
11 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. ET
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Mayuran Saravanapavanantham, PhD Candidate
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Ubiquitous and imperceptible integration of optoelectronics into the world around us would allow for novel modes of energy harvesting, communications, sensing, information display, and computing. To date, owing to the availability of foundries and scalable processing modalities, this has been achieved via fabrication of discrete elements that are then deterministically positioned throughout the world via pick-and-place assembly. Alternatively, availability of large-area, ultra-thin, and continuous elements would enable seamless integration of electronics onto surfaces around us much like a second skin.
Thin-film electronics, often fabricated with sub-micron device-functional layer thicknesses, present an avenue toward such mechanically imperceptible, large-area, and continuous integration of electronics onto any surface of choice—a paradigm that we refer to as "active surfaces".
In this talk, Saravanapavanantham will discuss his work on developing transferable ultra-thin organic photovoltaics, decoupling their manufacturing from the final integration thereby allowing the electrification of any surface of interest. In particular, he will present on the scalable manufacturing methods to fabricate fully-printed, ultra-thin photovoltaic modules and their integration onto lightweight and high strength composite fabrics. He will discuss the development of equivalently ultra-thin encapsulation films, and highlight further advances necessary to translate this into a commercially viable technology.
Attendees can join and participate in the series via Zoom.