Printed Electronics is a fast-growing new technology with high potential for new applications. Before introducing a new products based on printed electronics, technological questions like longtime behavior, reproducibility and economics need to be considered. Besides these aspects, the reliability of electrical connection is indispensable for a successful establishment of printed electronics for instance in the automotive market. Available connectors for printed electronics are not completely applicable to rigid, thick substrates such as a car bumper or a car door, where, for example, printed structures can be used for wiring, sensing and also actuating. In addition, the existing contact methods like soldering or contact glue have an unreliable connection with printed paste and can be easily damaged (delamination, etc.), other methods like crimps destroying the thick printed structures under external mechanical influence. Due to this, a new contacting method has to be suggested, which compensates the applied stress on the contact structure.&nbsp; &nbsp;In this paper commercially available “pogo pins” spring connectors were investigated and the possibility to use them as a contact method for printed electronics was analyzed. For this, the connectors for printed electronics were studied with the focus on reliability requirements in the automotive industry. For the investigation, silver contact pads were printed (jet-dispensed) on polycarbonate substrate and equipped with “pogo pins” connectors. After, the structures were exposed to vibration under -25°C, 24°C and 85°C for 1, 2, 4, 8 hours regarding ISO 16750-3_2007_Mechanical Loads.After the test, the temperature influence on contact resistance and pin´s recess rate were analyzed in the relation to the vibration load and the load duration. The obtained results provide an initial information for spring interconnections development for printed electronics, aiming to increase the reliability of the connectors and fulfilling the declared standards of automotive industry. For connections optimization the influence of the spring strength, stiffness and pin´s geometry in combination with various substrates and printed pastes on the contact resistance and contact robustness will be studied.

Reliability Study on Spring Interconnections for Piezo-Jet Printed Electronics Under Environmental Stress

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/SMASIS/SMASIS2021/volume/85499

ASME 2021 Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS2021)

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.