BLACKLEAF - Engineering Water-Based Graphene Inks for Scalable Printed Heating Systems

Printed graphene heaters offer significant potential for lightweight, flexible, and large-area thermal management applications. However, their industrial implementation requires careful control of ink formulation, printing parameters, and curing conditions to ensure reproducible electrical and thermal performance.
This presentation describes the development of water-based graphene inks specifically engineered for scalable printing processes. The influence of graphene characteristics, solid content, rheology, formulation strategy, deposition parameters, and curing conditions on sheet resistance, temperature uniformity, adhesion, and operational stability is discussed.
Flexible heating patches and large-area heating panels are presented as application examples. The results demonstrate how the combined optimization of material formulation and manufacturing conditions enables homogeneous heating, reproducible electrical performance, and durable operation.
This work provides practical formulation and processing guidelines for translating water-based graphene inks into reliable printed heating systems suitable for industrial manufacturing.