Printed electronics materials, together with Sun Chemical’s solutions for high-tech graphics and DIC’s pressure sensitive tapes and foams, offer a complete material solution for multiple markets, including consumer electronics, automotive, medical, industrial, aerospace and wearables.

Sun Chemical’s formulation and application development capabilities enable the products to meet and often exceed the ever-increasing requirements for performance and reliability of electronic materials and offer tailored-made solutions for many printed electronics applications.

Sun Chemical offers materials that can be used with additive printing processes to form single or multi-layer printed electronic components on a wide range of substrates and end applications.

Inks for Flexible Circuits and Interconnects

Polymer thick film inks found commercial success in additive manufacturing of flexible circuits for keyboard, membrane switches and capacitive switches and various interconnects. The push for better cost effectiveness, higher density and complexity of flexible circuits and more environmentally friendly inks and processes, give rise to innovative ink technologies hitting the market.

SunTronic silver conductive inks offer cost-performance balance to meet even the most cost sensitive projects. Here’s some of our offerings for flexible circuits and interconnects:

• Screen printable thermally cured conductive inks and UV or UV-LED curable PTF dielectrics
• Silver and carbon based conductive inks with a wide range of conductivities are available
• Elastic silver, carbon and dielectric package for stretchable circuits and sensors
• Fine line printable and highly conductive silver inks capable to print transparent metal mesh, or denser and complex flexible circuitry
• Silver inks compatible with current surface mount technologies – electrically conductive adhesives as well as low temperature solder pastes
• Optically transparent clears for passivation and environmental protection of transparent switch and backlighting applications
• Inkjet printable conductive nanosilver ink and dielectrics inks for digital printing

In-Mold Electronics (IME)

Create revolutionary electronics designs with best-in-class IME materials. This new way of integrating electronics into plastics opens up immense possibilities for product designers and electronics manufacturers to create 3D contoured smart electronic surfaces. IME enable the production of ergonomic, lightweight and durable parts through cost-effective manufacturing processes requiring less assembly and fewer moving parts.

As a long-time supplier in In-Mold Decoration (IMD) and Film-Insert Molding (FIM) applications, Sun Chemical is well positioned within the value chain for appliances, automotive, industrial and medical electronics markets.

With the new generation of Sun Chemical’s IME electronic inks, you can now integrate touch switches and lighting into IMD/FIM applications using the best-in-class electronic materials that can withstand even the harshest conditions of the injection molding process.

Key Features of Our Offerings for IME Materials

• Conductive IME silver inks deliver the best balance between electrical performance and 3D formability as well as cost-ef­fectiveness and direct over-molding capabilities.
• Sun Chemical delivers extensive technical expertise with the individual process steps for IME and proven capability to optimize ink stacks that can meet even the most challenging 3D forming and circuit design requirements.
• IME dielectrics have excellent formability, they are globally available as thermally curable inks, and UV-curable for US and AP regions.

Solutions for Stretchable Electronics

Sun Chemical’s SunTronic solutions for stretchable and wearable electronics contains a range of functional materials to support applications where high level of conformability is required. This allows for easier integration of electronic functionality into stretchable and wearable materials which are typically not possible with traditional copper based circuits.

Key Features of Our Offerings for Stretchable and Wearable Electronics

• Screen printable elastic silver and carbon inks with high levels of conformability and elongation capability, exceeding 100% elongation
• UV and UV-LED curable stretchable dielectric for crossover insulation
• Water-based stretchable encapsulant and a screen printable carrier enable direct patterning of multi-layer encapsulated stretchable structures
• SunTronic stretchable electronic materials offer wide range of design options for your next stretchable and wearable electronic project.

Inks for Printed Antenna Applications

As wireless network system capabilities and the expectations of connectivity everywhere continue to grow, antenna integration is on a rise. SunTronic products for antenna applications can conform to a wide range of processes, from etch and plating resists for subtractive processes to fully additive processes, including high speed roll-to-roll and inkjet printing.

Printed RFID antenna is already used in many devices, including smart cards for payment, transportation or access control, smart supply chains and logistics. It can also be used as a part of various sensors systems for tracking the goods during the manufacture, transportation, storage and even use.

Printed antenna for mobile devices and interconnects on 3D surfaces is also finding its way to market and offers a lower cost alternative to laser direct structuring.

Key Features of Our Offerings for Printed Antenna

• High conductivity silver inks with sharp definition and low roughness
• Inks for screen printing, flexography, pad printing, inkjet printing and dispensing are available
• Compatibility with various substrates, including PET, PC, PVC, acrylics, label papers and others
• Inks with excellent adhesion to copper and aluminum traces for hybrid tags and RFID enabled circuits and sensors
• UV and UV-LED dielectrics for crossovers and bridge insulation
• Release inks for tamper-proof tags

DIC’s Liquid Crystal materials serve as photo-alignment agents which exhibit outstanding functionality and provide excellent adhesion properties to coatings on glass and plastic substrates. DIC’s Liquid Crystal range consists of materials with varying degrees of adhesion and viscosity and are available in various solvent-based grades.

Key attributes and features:

• Exceptional adhesion to glass
• Superb adhesion to plastics
• Available in numerous viscosities and degrees of adhesion
• Available in various solvent-based grades