Inkjet printing silver-containing inks

Abstract

The fabrication of conductive silver tracks using Drop-onDemand inkjet printing has been the focus of much research in the first decade of the 21s' century. The appeal lies in inkjet' s ability to produce patterns without using masks on a variety of substrates, with the goal being to produce highly conductive silver tracks on flexible, polymeric substrates. In order to achieve this, inks have been printed using silver nanoparticle suspensions, which require low curing temperatures. Inks that have been prepared from silver solutions have also been printed. This type of ink gives good conductivities (50% of bulk silver and higher) and can be chemically converted at room temperature, which allows low Tg polymeric substrates such as PET (Tg 75°C) to be used. This paper primarily discusses the obtained morphologies from the thermal, laser-assisted or chemical conversion of an inkjet printed silver solution ink.