Laser Direct Writing Assisted Fabrication of Skin Compatible Metal Electrodes

Skin-compatible electrodes have been studied intensively for its application in wearable electronics. To satisfy various deformations of electronic skin, it requires to fabricate a highly conductive, mechanically stable, flexible, and stretchable electrode. Here, a feasible laser direct writing (LDW) process is carried out to fabricate micro-spring structured metal electrodes. The metal electrodes show high conductivity and transparency with sheet resistance of 4.8 ohm per square and at transmittance of 83%. It is worthy of noting that, the metal electrodes have an excellent mechanical-electrical stability, where stretching over 75% and bending over 5000 times induces resistance variance less than 5% and 2%, respectively. The excellent mechanical and electrical behavior of the micro-spring metal electrodes are promising to be useful for wearable electronics. The LDW process may facilitate the design and prototype of the skin compatible metal electrodes in the coming future.