Aerosol jet printing (AJP) is a direct write fabrication technique, with high resolution, design flexibility, and integration capabilities. AJP is capable of printing elaborate material textures on complex, flexible, and stretchable substrates, like fabricating the subtle, intricate electronic and biocompatible sensors, bio-electrodes, antennas, LEDs, RFID tags, 3D interconnects, and even micro-coils for
electronic packaging. Specifically, AJP possesses the potential to enable novel and efficient chip packaging solutions on ceramic substrates, such as low-loss micro-strip lines (MSLs) printing to achieve high connectivity, and multi-material microwave package printing with compatible passive and active components.
However, excellent circuits printing performances require material compatibility, process optimization, and fabrication reliability. Appropriate ink selection leads to excellent adhesion, wetting, and compatibility with the targeted substrate, fulfilling the electrical, mechanical, and thermal requirements. Moreover, ink features, like nozzle size, aerosol flow rate, jetting distance, substrate
temperature, and relative humidity, largely affect the jetting, deposition, and curing processes, determining the printing accuracy and uniformity. Furthermore, complex geometrical and multi-functional circuits on ceramic substrates depend on the performance of reliable resistance, capacitance, inductance, voltage, current, etc.
Therefore, printed circuit post-testing, such as annealing, sintering, and coating, is critical to evaluate the circuits performance, enhancing the fabrication reliability.
Hence, the Special Issue focuses on a collection of original and review articles related to ink technique studies, process parameter optimizations, and post-processing techniques for circuits printing on various substrates. Ingenious and initiative technique applications in chip packaging industry are also welcome.
○The ink selection with various suspensions and experimental investigations;
○Experimental and theoretical analyses on parameter optimization for printing performances;
○Mechanism analyses of printed ceramics substrates;
○ The parameter prediction and optimization of process optimization with machine learning;
○ Post-processing and testing techniques for reliability of circuits printing;
○ Flexible and stretchable biosensors using AJP;
○ Numerical modelling and mechanism analyzing AJP processes.
Prof. Dr. Feng GU
Nanchang Key Laboratory for Advanced Manufacturing of Electronic Information Materials and Devices, Nanchang 330013, China
Prof. Dr. Qingyu YAO
Faculty of Engineering, Huanghe Science and Technology University, Zhengzhou 450003, China
Interests: low-dimensional materials and devices for energy, environment and optoelectronic applications; flexible and fibre electronics; material microscale 3D printing technology research and industrialization
Interests: micro/nano surface machining on semiconductor and ceramic materials; wear investigations on polished surfaces; mechanical property post-testing on ceramic substrates; AI aided parameter optimization in precision manufacturing
Coatings is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on coatings and surface engineering published monthly online by MDPI.
○ High Visibility: indexed within Scopus, SCIE (Web of Science), Inspec, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases.
○ Rapid Publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 13.8 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 2.8 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the second half of 2023).
○ Impact Factor: 3.4 (2022).
○ Renowned domestic and international professionals in this domain will be invited to evaluate the selected submissions. We will award authors of the top 10% of outstanding articles with a cash prize of 20,000 RMB. Authors of the top 20–30 outstanding manuscripts receive a 10,000 RMB cash prize. The authors of the top 30–50% of manuscripts will get a 5,000 RMB cash incentive.
○ The cash rewards specified above will be supplied by WE Electronics.
○ An outstanding paper certificate will be presented to the author of the manuscript that wins the award.
○ Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 July 2025
