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Abstract Cyclic degradation in flexible electronic inks remains a key challenge while their deployment in life critical applications is ongoing. The origin of electrical degradation of a screen-printed stretchable conductive ink with silver flakes embedded in a polyurethane binder is investigated under uniaxial monotonic and cyclic stretching, using in-situ confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy experiments, for varying ink thickness (1, 2, and 3 layers, each layer around 8–10 μ m) and trace width (0.5, 1, and 2 mm). Cracks form under monotonic stretching, and the evolution of crack pattern (density, length and width) with applied strain is affected by ink thickness such that the 3-layer ink exhibits larger normalized resistance but slightly lower resistance than the 1-layer ink up to strains of 125%. For cyclic stretching, the crack density and length do not evolve with cycling. However, the cracks widen and deepen, leading to an increase in resistance with cycling. There exists a strong correlation between fatigue life, i.e. the number of cycles until a normalized resistance of 100 is reached, and the strain amplitude. The normalized resistance increase rate with respect to cycling is also found to scale with strain amplitude. The rate of change in resistance with cycling decreases with ink thickness and trace width. For practical applications, thicker ( ⩾ 25 μ m) and wider (⩾2 mm) inks should be used to lower resistance increases with repeated deformation. 

Abstract The electrical performance of stretchable electronic inks degrades as they undergo cyclic deformation during use, posing a major challenge to their reliability. The experimental characterization of ink fatigue behavior can be a time-consuming process, and models allowing accurate resistance evolution and life estimates are needed. Here, a model is proposed for determining the electrical resistance evolution during cyclic loading of a screen-printed composite conductive ink. The model relies on two input specimen-characteristic curves, assumes a constant rate of normalized resistance increase for a given strain amplitude, and incorporates the effects of both mean strain and strain amplitude. The model predicts the normalized resistance evolution of a cyclic test with reasonable accuracy. The mean strain effects are secondary compared to strain amplitude, except for large strain amplitudes (>10%) and mean strains (>30%). A trace width effect is found for the fatigue behavior of 1 mm vs 2 mm wide specimens. The input specimen-characteristic curves are trace-width dependent, and the model predicts a decrease inN_fby a factor of up to 2 for the narrower trace width, in agreement with the experimental results. Two different methods are investigated to generate the rate of normalized resistance increase curves: uninterrupted fatigue tests (requiring ∼6–7 cyclic tests), and a single interrupted cyclic test (requiring only one specimen tested at progressively higher strain amplitude values). The results suggest that the initial decrease in normalized resistance rate only occurs for specimens with no prior loading. The minimum-rate curve is therefore recommended for more accurate fatigue estimates.