High-Speed Thermochromism Control Method Integrating Water Cooling Circuits and Electric Heating Circuits Printed with Conductive Silver Nanoparticle Ink

With the widespread use of inkjet-printable conductive silver nanoparticle inks, lightweight, thin, and portable wearable displays that combine electrothermal circuit patterns and thermochromic inks have attracted much attention in recent years. Thermochromic displays, which undergo reversible color change according to temperature change, have the problem of low responsiveness due to the delay of heating and cooling. In this study, we propose a high-speed thermochromism control method that integrates a water-cooling circuit and an electric heating circuit using silver nanoparticle ink printing. As an evaluation experiment, we compared the cooling time of an electro-thermal pattern with and without the water-cooling circuit and verified the usefulness of the proposed method. In addition, we have developed applications such as PerformEyebrow, an artificial eyebrow device that extends facial expressions, and dynamic masks and questionnaires based on thermochromism, which demonstrate the potential of our high-speed color control method as a new media technology.