학술논문
Selective Metallization of 3D Printable Thermoplastic Polyurethanes
Document Type
Periodical
Author
Source
IEEE Access Access, IEEE. 7:104947-104955 2019
Subject
Language
ISSN
2169-3536
Abstract
This paper presents a selective metallization method for the newly developed 3D printable thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers (TPU): FilaFlex ® , SemiFlex™, PolyFlex™, and NinjaFlex ® . Silver nanoparticles were fabricated in-situ by photo-reduction on the surface of TPUs and acted as catalysts for copper ion adsorption. This method demonstrates the successful fabrication of copper patterns on flexible TPU filaments. Furthermore, Polyflex™ and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) filaments printed in the same part have been used to enable selective electroless plating directly on Polyflex™ material. Electroless copper deposited onto Polyflex™ has a sheet resistance of (139.4 ± 7.2) m $\Omega /\Box $ and a copper conductivity of (1.1 ± 0.1) $\times 10^{{7}}$ S/m that is comparable with bulk copper. Copper-plated Polyflex™ interconnects were fabricated as a proof of concept demonstrators.