Industries, specifically healthcare and aerospace, rely heavily on electronic materials and devices for daily operations. To avoid disrupting operations, accurate, reliable, and durable electronic components are required. Simple fabrication methods, in-field repairs, reliable device performance under extreme environments, including high temperatures and high stress, as well as long-term operation without performance lapses are among the challenges needed to be addressed for advancement. Polymer-based materials have the potential to address these needs if the host polymer can meet these challenges as typically it tends to be the point of failure in electronic devices. Thermoplastic elastomeric materials are ideal due to their intrinsic properties of simple processability, adaptability, and reconfigurability via temperature stimulus. Unfortunately, the use of thermoplastics is often limited as most applications require high temperatures above its liquidus/molten temperature, resulting in the loss of the desired mechanical properties and a liquid material. This work investigates a novel fabrication method for the thermoplastic elastomer styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS), showing potential to meet critical industrial challenges through simple fabrication and capability to support device operations at higher temperatures than expected. In this work, the thermal behavior, atypical mechanical behavior, and fundamental mechanisms resulting in such behavior of specific SEBS formulations is investigated. The impact of this work will offer SEBS as an alternative a host polymeric matrix that is durable, reliable under deformation, and reconfigurable deformable electronic materials that meet the constantly evolving demands of industry.
