Conductivity and Microstructure of Inkjet-Printed Silver Tracks Depending on the Digital Pattern, Sintering Process, Sub
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Conductivity and Microstructure of Inkjet-Printed Silver Tracks Depending on the Digital Pattern, Sintering Process, Substrate and Ink Dana Weise1, Andrea Grimm1, Uwe Weiß1, Kalyan Yoti Mitra1, Enrico Sowade1 and Reinhard R. Baumann1,2 1
Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany ² Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS, Chemnitz, Germany ABSTRACT Silver nanoparticle inks are increasingly applied for the manufacture of inkjet-printed electrically conductive patterns. In order to obtain high conductivity, the printed liquid patterns have to be functionalized by an appropriate post- treatment step. Modern post-treatment methods using e.g. microwaves, intense pulsed light or adopted infrared radiation, are nevertheless the basis of the thermal process. The thermal treatment e.g. in furnaces or on heating plates, is applicable for a great variety of inks and ensures an efficient sintering without major technical efforts. It has been studied intensively wherein the reports mainly focus on reduction of the resistivity by controlling the parameters of the thermal treatment. Our researches exceed these comparative studies by investigating multi-layered patterns, their manufacturing and posttreatment. Two silver nanoparticle inks were inkjet printed on a rigid and a flexible substrate. The geometry of the patterns was varied. The different drying behaviors of the inks were investigated. In addition, the number of layers which were printed on top of each other was varied. The sintering temperatures and time durations were varied. The morphology of the patterns is investigated by profilometry and optical microscopy. The microstructure is analyzed by scanning electron microscope and X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, the electrical characteristics were determined by the measurement of the resistance. The results indicate the relation between the manufacture and the resulting microstructure and functionality of the patterns. The knowledge of these parameters enables us to control the industrial manufacturing of similar conductive patterns. INTRODUCTION In printed electronics the functionality of the printed device plays the most important role. This functionality of printed layers can be generated by a sintering process [1]. For this, various sintering methods are commonly used. Amongst all sintering methods, exemplary photonic sintering and plasma sintering [2, 3, 4] are suitable for flexible polymer foils with a low melting point. [5] However, for rigid substrates with a higher melting point thermal sintering is an appropriate method because it does not require complex techniques. Silver is an often used material for applications such as printed electronic devices, for example printed transistors [6, 7], radio frequency identification (RFID) [6, 8] tags and other circuit components [11]. Here the inkjet technology has attained great interest because of its high
accuracy as well as less material consumption [10]. Until now researches include the inkjet printing of silver nanoparticle inks and thermal si
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