Dry Film Photoresist Enabled Sustainable Large-Area Manufacturing for Flexible Electronics

Flexible electronics have attracted significant attention for their wide-range applications in flexible displays, human–machine interfaces, epidermal sensor systems, and biomedical engineering. Transfer printing serves as an effective approach to enable the manufacture of flexible electronics with high resolution, multiscale, and mass production features, which requires a lithographic process and the transfer of the devices from rigid substrates onto flexible substrates. However, typical wet transfer printing faces a series of challenges such as time consumption, instability of devices, and chemical solvent wastes, which cause harmful effects on the environment and health. In this work, we develop a sustainable, time-saving, and cost-effective transfer printing method by using a dry film photoresist (DFP). The reliable in situ manufacturing of large-area thin-film electronics is reported. Theoretical studies and mechanical experiments have been conducted to investigate the mechanism of DFP transfer printing and dry lift-off processes. Large-area and high-resolution photoresist and metallic patterns on various substrates are demonstrated. The application of in situ fabricated critical electrical components for collecting electromyography and electrocardiogram signals has been demonstrated, which offer signals with a superior signal-to-noise ratio and quality. Furthermore, the fabricated electrodes exhibit higher durability and stability compared with commercially available gel electrodes.