Materials for Gravure Printing of Chemical Gas Sensors

From 2012-2015 the world’s first printed amperometric gas sensors were developed at KWJ Engineering Inc. as the subject of an NSF SBIR. The patented technology was used to found SPEC-sensor LLC and obtain commercial funds. More than one million sensors have been sold using SPEC’s patented designs, which led to the recent acquisition by Interlink Electronics, Inc. The next challenge is to grow sensor production output to 10-100 million chemical gas sensors and enter new markets that require higher volume manufacturing. The production volume increase can only come from advanced manufacturing such as provided by roll-to-roll (R2R) printing. The challenges to print gas sensors in high volumes include but are not limited to developing new composite materials that build order of magnitude thinner “gas” sensors, yet also are compatible with the R2R printing and flexible electronic design processes and deliver the appropriate sensor chemistry for optimal performance. This miniaturization and process compatibility, without loss in performance, will bridge the cost-performance gap to meet the large-scale demand of consumer applications. Advanced volume manufacturing of digital gas sensing modules enables new markets and produces benefits for society in new innovative wearable and embedded-infrastructure products that increase human safety, health, and wellbeing.