Experimental Assessment and Data-Driven Modeling of Three-Dimensional-Printed Conductive Patterns on Electrospun Substrates

Abstract Flexible electronics (FE) have emerged as a key technology with applications in various fields, e.g., energy storage and bio-electronics. Electrospinning (ES), inkjet printing (IJP), and intense pulsed light (IPL), constitute a flexible multistage system capable to handle high customization requirements. The ES/IJP/IPL system is used for flexible substrate fabrication, conductive patterns printing, and sintering, respectively. Although the ES/IJP/IPL system seems to be suitable for on-demand FE devices manufacturing, the correlation of materials and process parameters of individual stages (i.e., ES/IJP/IPL) with the FE devices performance (i.e., conductivity) remains unexplored. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to evaluate the integration of ES, IJP, and IPL, for future production of high-performance FE devices. Various materials and process parameters are used to investigate their influence on the FE device resistivity, including different polyacrylonitrile (PAN) concentrations, voltage regimes, flow rates and the collector types in ES, and distinct number of ink layers in IJP. The study includes (1) an experimental assessment of the electrospun membrane morphology (e.g., fiber diameter) and ink coating characteristics (e.g., ink penetration) using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and (2) a data-driven analysis through logistic regression (LR), Gaussian process (GP), and Bayesian neural network (BNN) classification models to predict FE conductive feasibility. The results indicate that membranes with larger fiber diameters benefit ink penetration, printed layer/multilayer consistency, and conductivity. This is corroborated with the classification models, where the number of printed layers, fiber diameter, and collector type, are identified as significant factors for accurately predicting conductive patterns feasibility.