Reactive conductive ink capable of in situ and rapid synthesis of conductive patterns suitable for inkjet printing

Abstract

We report a fabrication method of the conductive pattern based on in situ reactive silver precursor inks by inkjet printing. The reactive silver precursor inks were prepared with ethylene glycol and deionized water mixture as the solvent, and silver nitrate as silver source. Sodium borohydride solution as the reducing agent was first coated on photographic paper by screen printing process, and then dried at 50 ◦C for 4 h. Furthermore, the reactive silver precursor inks were printed on a photographic paper coated with sodium borohydride using inkjet printing to form silver nanoparticles in situ due to redox reaction, and thus a conductive pattern was obtained. The effects of the reactive silver precursor ink concentration and printing layer number and treatment temperature on the electrical properties and microstructures of the printed patterns were investigated systematically. The size range of in situ-formed silver nanoparticles was 50–90 nm. When the reactive silver precursor ink concentration was 0.13 g/mL, the five-layer printed pattern exhibited a sheet resistance of 4.6 Ω/γ after drying at room temperature for 2 h; furthermore, the sheet resistance of the printed pattern decreased to 1.4 Ω/γ after drying at 130 ◦C for 2 h. In addition, the display function circuit was printed on the photographic paper to realize the display of the numbers 0–99. It provides new research ideas for the development of environmentally friendly and low-cost flexible paper-based circuits.