Screen-printing Resistive Temperature Sensor development with sustainable carbon pastes

During the last decades, increment of the demand of electronics and the programmed obsolescence have entailed a growth of the electronic waste. On this context, there is a need of developing new sustainable and/or recyclable electronic devices. Sustainability of new devices could be ensured by using biobased materials and avoiding those which are harmful for the environment. These new materials could be used to develop specific devices, as resistive temperature sensors deposited on flexible materials, for wearable devices. Resistive temperature sensors use their electrical resistivity variation with temperature to measure the environment temperature. The variation on the resistance of the sensor depends on the material they are composed of. On this work, resistive temperature sensors are printed by screen printing, with four different pastes: a silver based commercial paste and three carbon-based pastes, a commercial one and two sustainable developed pastes. The sensors were printed onto glass fiber substrate to ensure flexibility and infused with a resin to get a composite.