Simulation of flexible electronics inkjet printing capacitors characteristic

Abstract

Flexible electronics which are a disruptive science that requires multi-disciplinary research is developing rapidly in many electronic sectors recently. To achieve flexible electronics, inkjet printing is one of the most promising ways to print the circuit ingredients with almost using any substrates. For this study, the metal-insulator-metal capacitor (MIMCAP) is the target to design. MIMCAP is playing a crucial part in integrated electronic circuits, it is formed by sandwiching two parallel metal plates with a thin dielectric in the middle of the two metals. From the research, most of the materials that are used to print MIMCAP are based on the combination of heat-curable silver and poly-4-vinylphenol (PVP). Due to the usage of the nano silver-based ink for current technology is not really budget friendly which costs about RM1800 for 100g. Therefore, this study focuses on investigating the materials that can replace silver. The objectives of this project are to design the MIMCAP by using a material that has a better electronic performance by optimizing the device structure design, to analyse the electronic performance of the designed MIMCAP, and to validate the proposed device structure with other similar works. The design and analysis of this study were carried out using COMSOL Multiphysics simulation tools. Several parameters such as variation of the gap between the metal and insulator, dimension of the MIMCAP, design structure of the MIMCAP, and the number of the layer coating of the insulator observed better electronic performance in terms of capacitance. Similarly, from the research, most of the MIMCAP capacitance that uses the nano silver-based ink is about 9 pF to 310 pF with the dimension from 1 mm2 to 36 mm2. The result of this study is shown by using the Barium Titanate and Graphene as the dielectric and conducting layer with the advanced MIMCAP design structure that stacks up together and forms a multilayer MIMCAP, the capacitance that the proposed design structure can generate is 1.5633 uF. With that so, all the parameters set inside the COMSOL Multiphysics follow the room temperature as the standard.