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Graphene-based conducting inks for direct inkjet printing of flexible conductive patterns and their applications in electric circuits and chemical sensors

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Abstract

A series of inkjet printing processes have been studied using graphene-based inks. Under optimized conditions, using water-soluble single-layered graphene oxide (GO) and few-layered graphene oxide (FGO), various high image quality patterns could be printed on diverse flexible substrates, including paper, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and polyimide (PI), with a simple and low-cost inkjet printing technique. The graphene-based patterns printed on plastic substrates demonstrated a high electrical conductivity after thermal reduction, and more importantly, they retained the same conductivity over severe bending cycles. Accordingly, flexible electric circuits and a hydrogen peroxide chemical sensor were fabricated and showed excellent performances, demonstrating the applications of this simple and practical inkjet printing technique using graphene inks. The results show that graphene materials-which can be easily produced on a large scale and possess outstanding electronic properties-have great potential for the convenient fabrication of flexible and low-cost graphene-based electronic devices, by using a simple inkjet printing technique.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials and Center for Nanoscale Science & Technology, Institute of Polymer Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Lu Huang, Yi Huang, Jiajie Liang, Xiangjian Wan & Yongsheng Chen

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  1. Lu Huang
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  2. Yi Huang
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  3. Jiajie Liang
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  4. Xiangjian Wan
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  5. Yongsheng Chen
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Correspondence to Yi Huang or Yongsheng Chen.

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Huang, L., Huang, Y., Liang, J. et al. Graphene-based conducting inks for direct inkjet printing of flexible conductive patterns and their applications in electric circuits and chemical sensors. Nano Res. 4, 675–684 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-011-0123-z

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