Hi all researchers,
I have been working on a research project where I need to fabricate very thin traces of the metal on a thin film of PDMS that can withstand large number of loading and unloading cycles. After reading the available literature, this seems to me a big challenge. Is there any solution available to solve this problem? or is there any other material available similar to PDMS which can help me?
Dear Muhammad Farooq , it is actually possible to deposit thin traces of metals like gold or aluminium on PDMS, another thing would be durability, but it will depend on the process of loading and unloading. Probably it would be useful to describe this process in more detail to properly help you.
If the process of loading/unloading implies an elastic deformation of the PDMS thin film, and this deformation is quite big, the metal traces would probably break down and if their pourpose is conducting electricity, obviously it won´t be possible. The same would be true if the process of loading/unloading would be bending the PDMS thin film, an excess of bending could break the metal traces.
To overcome these hurdles you could use a suitable design of these metal traces (I mean, if they don´t have to be stright lines). For instance a zig-zag line could withstand the deformation of the PDMS film because the zig-zag line acts like a spring, and probably increasing durability in the long term.
Hope it helps.
Dear Manuel Gómez thanks for a great answer! My design does not allow me to change the shape of the traces. Moreover there are both type of deformations involved loading/unloading and bending/folding. I have already seen papers reporting the same issue while developing conductive traces on PDMS. I tried to use conductive traces on polyimide and then sticking the PDMS and polyimide together but again facing the same issue that PDMS and polyimide do not stick well. Do you think there is any solution for this?
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