Materials and Processes for High Volume Integration of Strechable Circuits into E-Textile
Abstract
This presentation will give an overview of ACI Materials and Duratech Industries Flextech project “Optimization of Materials and Processes for High Volume Integration of Stretchable Circuits into E-Textiles.” This project aims to further optimize materials and production processes for fully additive, printing-based manufacture of e-textiles and conformable sensors. It also aims to advance the manufacturing readiness of a lower cost single step heat transfer process versus the more labor intensive two step heat transfer process primarily used today. If successful, the materials and processes developed should enable US based manufacture of durable e-textiles and wearable sensors at costs competitive with the rest of the world.
Biography
"Mike" has spent his entire 20+ year career working with printable electronically functional materials and additive manufacturing methods for FHE devices including: formulation, conventional printing, direct write printing, equilibrium and non-equilibrium curing methods, and application development. Along with his management duties at ACI, he’s still active in formulating materials. In 2019 he invented ACI’s Alchemy series semi-sinterable conductive inks which enable fully additive high-volume manufacture of flexible hybrid circuits on PET films using low temperature solder-based SMD attach.
Prior to joining ACI in 2018, he spent two years at NextFlex managing their printing/direct write programs, and overseeing material selection and integration into devices. From 2013-2016 he worked for NovaCentrix after they acquired PChem Associates, the unique low temperature, ultra-fast sintering nanoparticle ink company he co-founded in 2004. He started his career at Parelec Inc., pioneers of particle-metalorganic decomposition (ParMOD) inks, developing materials for the DARPA MICE program.
He has received an IPC Distinguished Committee Service award for his contributions PE/FHE standards and is a NextFlex fellow. Mike holds a M.S degree in chemical engineering from The Pennsylvania State University where his research on synthesis of surfactant stabilized nanoparticles was awarded a 2000 Materials Research Institute Xerox Research Award.