Additive Manufacturing for Active Electronic Components: A Review

Abstract

Fabrication of fully functional devices has been one of the ultimate goals of the emerging additive manufacturing technology. In order to achieve this goal, an indispensable step is to fabricate active electronic components using fully additive methods. Although there are still numerous roadblocks that need to be overcome toward this goal, research activities in the field of additive manufacturing for active electronic components are progressing with a considerable pace and have been achieving significant successes. The purpose of this review is therefore to consolidate recent developments in this exciting field. These include the components that currently can be fabricated by fully additive methods such as transistor, LED and battery. We discuss and compare the advantages and disadvantages of these methods in printing such components. We also discuss major challenges that still needed to be addressed in the roadmap towards additive manufacturing of active components.