Printed temperature and heat flux sensor arrays

Healthcare, soft robotics, and battery management are only three examples of sensor solutions that measure the spatial and temporal distribution of temperatures and local heat flux. Thermistors and thermocouples (TCs) can both be realized by printing technologies. Combining screen printing, inkjet printing, and aerosol jet printing enables a unique combination of large-area processing and high-resolution fabrication. We have realized printed temperature sensor arrays using a printable thermoresistive polymer with several hundred individual sensors. We have recently demonstrated its application as an additional computer security feature for microprocessors [1]. As an alternative to organic sensor materials, inorganic nanomaterials are promising for thermal sensing applications based on thermoelectric principles. We have realized thermocouples as sensor arrays based on mechanically flexible substrates [3]. We used high-performance (SbBi)2(TeSe)3-based printed flexible TE materials to fabricate two types of shape-conformable TC-based temperature sensor arrays with 25 pixels.