Research on the performance of screen printing line in water conductive ink

Abstract

Water-based conductive inks are environmentally friendly and energy efficient, when applied to the screen printing; they not only reduce the production costs, but also improve the working environment. The performance of conductive ink will be affected by the screen’s printing pressure, substrate types, line shapes, and other factors. Single factor experiments were chosen, the resistance value of the printed circuit under different factors were tested by changing the screen printing squeegee pressure, the substrate type, and the shape of printed electronic circuits. The results show that the thickness of the ink layer can be improved by greater squeegee pressure, thereby improving the conductivity; substrates with large surface tension can easily contribute to good conductivity; the conductivity on PET film was higher than that on the PE film; with different shapes on the printed electronic circuits, the conductive properties were not the same, the order of the conductivity was rectangular wave > broken line > annulus > linear. The performance of screen printing line has a certain influence on the conductivity of the conductive ink which should be strictly controlled in production to obtain production optimization.