The Innovated Flexible Surface Acoustic Wave Devices on Fully InkJet Printing Technology

An innovated fabricated process of the flexible surface acoustic wave (SAW) device is proposed in this study. Fully inkjet printing and sol-gel technology are used in this fabricated process. The flexible SAW device is composed of a ZnO layer sandwiched in between a flexible polyimide plastic sheet and two sets of interdigital transducers layer. The material of the top interdigital transducer layer is nano silver. The ZnO solution is prepared by sol-gel technology. Both the ZnO and top interdigital transducer layers are deposited by inkjet printing. The fully inkjet printing process possesses the advantages of direct patterning and low-cost. It does not require photolithography and etching processes since the pattern is directly printed on the flexible sheet. The center frequency of this prototype is matched with the design frequency. The prototype demonstrates that the presented flexible SAW device is available for the possible application in future. It may be applied to the sensing on curve surface.