Mid Sweden University

Printed electronics is rapidly developing, where more and more components are printable. High speed roll-to-roll processesare preferred for low cost production of flexible electronics. Often, the substrates used for printed electronics are some typeof plastic such as PET or Kapton. An alternative to plastic is to use paper substrate that has the benefits of beingenvironmentally friendly, recyclable and renewable. Paper is also the material of choice for packages of various goods.In this work we have developed an ink-jet printable temperature sensor, a thermistor, consisting ofpoly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate)( PEDOT:PSS) on paper substrate. The starting material is acommercial PEDOT:PSS ink-jet ink (Orgacon IJ-1005, Agfa). This ink was then modified to increase the thermal sensitivityby addition of the co-solvents Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and Polyethylene glycol (PEG) in different quantities. DMSO hasbeen shown to increase the conductance by arranging the PEDOT into more conductive pathways and by removing PSS[1] and PEG to increase the carrier density and mobility [2].The sensors consisted of modified PEDOT:PSS lines printed on photo-paper substrate between contacts printed usingsilver nano-particle ink. The line widths were varied from one pixel, corresponding to one pass of one nozzle up-to 20pixels. The linewidths were then measured to be from 45 μm up-to 450 μm. The thickness of the sensor was also varied asone, two or three printed layers. The characterization as a temperature sensor was performed by using a setup consistingof a Peltier cooler and a heating element to step the temperature. As a reference a PT-100 element fixed to the surface ofthe cooler/heater was used.An increase in resistance from 30.5 MΩ to 85 MΩ, corresponding to a change of 2.8 times, were measured when thetemperature were changed from 22 °C to -12 °C as can be seen in the figure. This gives a ΔR/ΔT of 0.093.Such a printed sensor can be used for applications where a low cost, printable solution is needed, such as printed directlyon packages, for environmental monitoring and similar.[1] C.S. Pathak, J.P. Singh, R. Singh, Effect of dimethyl sulfoxide on the electrical properties of PEDOT:PSS/ n-Siheterojunction diodes, Current Applied Physics, 15, (2015), 528-534[2] Yow-Jon Lin, Wei-Shih Ni and Jhe-You Lee, Effect of incorporation of ethylene glycol into PEDOT:PSS on electronphonon coupling and conductivity, Journal of Applied Physics 117, (2015), 215501