Heaters using the resistance heating principle are used in various industrial fields that require heat and are also essentially used in bidet among small home appliances. A planar heater and a coil-inserted heater mounted on a conventional commercially used bidet have disadvantages and limitations of complicated manufacturing process and local heating. In this study, silver-palladium (Ag-Pd) powder material was used for a screen-printing process that is more advantageous in achieving simplification than the existing process, and a rod-type heater for bidet was manufactured. The on-off cycle test under actual conditions was conducted to confirm the durability and the capability of the fabricated heater, and the fabricated heater operated more than 2,600 on-off cycles, which means it could be applied for a commercial product. In addition, through the on-off cycles under harsh conditions, the cause of failure was identified after the test that the durability limit temperature of the heater was 850℃. Through Ag-Pd rod heater in this study, it is expected to contribute to the efficient development of electrode materials for heaters and the improvement of the durability of heaters in the future.

Laser-induced plasmonic sintering of metal nanoparticles (NPs) is a promising technology to fabricate flexible conducting electrodes, since it provides instantaneous, simple, and scalable manufacturing strategies without requiring costly facilities and complex processes. However, the metal NPs are quite expensive because complicated synthesis procedures are needed to achieve long-term reliability with regard to chemical deterioration and NP aggregation. Herein, we report laser-induced Ag NP self-generation and sequential sintering process based on low-cost Ag organometallic material for demonstrating highquality microelectrodes. Upon the irradiation of laser with 532 nm wavelength, pre-baked Ag organometallic film coated on a transparent polyimide substrate was transformed into a high-performance Ag conductor (resistivity of 2.2 × 10^-4 Ω·cm). To verify the practical usefulness of the technology, we successfully demonstrated a wearable transparent heater by using Ag-mesh transparent electrodes, which exhibited a high transmittance of 80% and low sheet resistance of 7 Ω/square.

In this study, we investigated the optical, electrical and exothermic characteristics of ITO/Ag/ITO multilayer structures prepared with various Ag thicknesses on quartz and PI substrates. The transparent conducting properties of the ITO/Ag/ITO multilayer films depended on the thickness of the mid-layer metal film. The ITO/Ag (14 nm)/ITO showed the highest Haccke’s figure of merit (FOM) of approximately 19.3×10^-3 Ω^-1. In addition, the exothermic property depended on the substrate. For an applied voltage of 3.7 V, the ITO/Ag (14 nm)/ITO multilayers on quartz and PI substrates were heated up to 110℃ and 200℃, respectively. The bending tests demonstrated a comparable flexibility of the ITO/Ag/IT multilayer to other transparent electrodes, indicating the potential of ITO/Ag/ITO multilayer as a flexible transparent conducting heater.

In this study, we investigated the effect of electrode pattern design on the thermal shock resistance and temperature uniformity of a ceramic heater. A cordierite substrate with a low thermal expansion coefficient was fabricated by tape casting, and a tungsten electrode was printed and used as a heating element. The temperature distribution of the ceramic heater was calculated by a finite-element method (FEM) by considering various electrode patterns, and the tensile stress distribution due to the thermal stress was calculated. In the electrode pattern with a single-line width, the central part of the ceramic heater was heated to the maximum temperature, and the position of the ceramic heater having a double-line width was changed to the maximum temperature, depending on the position of the minimum line width pattern. The highest tensile stress was found along the edges of the ceramic heater. The temperature gradient at the edge determined the tensile stress intensity. The smallest tensile stress was observed for electrode pattern D, which was expected to be advantageous in resisting thermal shock failures in ceramic heaters.

The degradation mechanism of Mo_xW_1-xSi₂ ultrahigh-temperature heating elements fabricated by selfpropagating high-temperature synthesiswas investigated. The Mo_xW_1-xSi₂ specimens (with and without post-annealing) were subjected to ADTs (accelerated degradation tests) at temperatures up to 1,700℃ at heating rates of 3, 4, 5, 7, and 14℃/min. The surface loads of all the specimen heaters were increased with the increase in the target temperature. For the Mo_xW_1-xSi₂ specimens without annealing, many pores and secondary-phase particles were observed in the microstructure; the surface load increased to 23.9 W/㎠ at 1,700℃, while the bending strength drastically reduced to 242 MPa. In contrast, the Mo_xW_1-xSi₂ specimens after post-annealing retained single- Mo_xW_1-xSi₂ phases and showed superior durability after the ADT. Consequently, it is thought that the formation of microcracks and coarse secondary phases during the ADT are the main causes for the degraded performance of the Mo_xW_1-xSi₂ heating elements without post-annealing.

Transparent film heaters employing silver nanowires (Ag NWs) have attracted increasing attention because of their widespread applications. However, the low thermal resistance of Ag NWs limits the maximum operating temperature of the Ag NW film heater. In this study, Ag NW film heaters with high mechanical and thermal stability were successfully developed. The thermal power-out characteristics of the Ag NW heaters were investigated as a function of the Ag NW density. The results revealed that the prepared flexible Ag NW heater possessed high thermal stability over 190℃ owing to ZnO encapsulation. This indicates that the Ag NW film with excellent thermal stability have remarkably high potential for use as electrodes in film heaters operating at high temperatures.

In this paper, the failure mechanism of PTC heater were examined closely by failure analysis and based on it, accelerated life test were conducted. Finally, life distribution and acceleration model were established. The failure mechanism of PTC heater such as crack, increase of resistance due to heating were identified. Two acceleration factors such as temperature, humidity were chosen with two levels each and accelerated life test were done. Life distribution were identified as Weibull distribution with shape parameter 5.4 and Temperature-Humidity model was fitted as an acceleration model.