Episode 8: Water vapor plasma bonds gold electrodes for flexible electronics

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Kenjiro Fukuda from RIKEN in Japan and Masahito Takakuwa of Waseda University about a technique to connect integrated electronics while maintaining their flexibility. They demonstrated the method on two gold electrodes. To make the two pieces of gold bond, the researchers treated the gold with water vapor plasma. The researchers used this technique to electrically connect the gold electrodes of an organic photovoltaic to an organic light-emitting diode without adding significant thickness, thereby ensuring the flexibility of the device. This study is published in Science Advances (doi:10.1126/sciadv.abl6228).