Bending endurance of printed conductive patterns on flexible substrates

摘要

This paper presents a research focused on the testing of flexible and printed components' mechanical properties. The flexibility and the bending endurance are the crucial properties for the production of smart labels and tags for smart packages. For these reasons, the presented research was concentrated on the development of bend test apparatus, as well as, on the specification and optimization of testing procedures. These procedures were verified on specially designed conductive test patterns manufactured by the use of three different technologies - standard flexible PCB manufacturing, screen printing of Ag pastes and Aerosol Jet® printing of Ag ink. Electrical parameters of test patterns were measured online and offline during the testing. The influences of test samples' electrical resistance on the number of bend cycles for different bending radiuses are described in this paper.