Roll-to-Roll Fabrication of Solution Processed Electronics

The production of electronic devices using solution based (“wet”) deposition technologies has some decisive technical and commercial advantages compared to competing approaches like vacuum based (“dry”) manufacturing. Particularly, the potential to scale up production processes to large areas and high volumes by introducing continuous roll-to-roll (R2R) methods on flexible substrates has been the topic of intense studies from both applied research institutes and industry already for some years. Decisive steps forward have been achieved during that time, resulting in the dawn of commercial applications for a number of processes, while additional development work is still needed in some other fields. This review summarizes the work published during the last few years on the R2R printing and wet coating of electronic devices. An overview is presented of the basic operational principles for the most commonly used R2R printing and coating methods and techniques for proper web handling in R2R lines. Then, the most commonly used types of flexible substrate materials are introduced, followed by a review of the work published in the application areas of transparent conductor materials, printed electric connections, light emitting devices, photovoltaic energy generation, printed logic, and sensing.