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arXiv · 1906.10646

Water vapor assisted sintering of silver nanoparticle inks for printed electronics

Justin. Bourassa·Alex Ramm·James Q. Feng·Michael J. Renn
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Abstract

In printed electronics, conductive traces are often produced by printing inks of silver nanoparticles dispersed in solvents. A sintering process is usually needed to make the printed inks conductive by removing the organic dispersants and allowing metal-to-metal contacts among nanoparticles for atomic diffusion and neck formation. It has been challenging to sinter silver nanoparticle inks in a thermal oven at a temperature < 150 C to avoid thermal damage to the plastic substrate while achieving desired conductivity. This work presents a simple yet effective way to sinter a silver nanoparticle ink below 120 C (even at 80 C) by exposing the printed ink to water vapor in the oven. The results consistently show a significant reduction of line resistivity for the samples sintered in a moist oven compared to those sintered in a dry oven. Hence, solvent vapor-assisted sintering of metal nanoparticle inks can become an enabling approach to broaden product range of printed electronics.

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Justin. Bourassa, Alex Ramm, James Q. Feng, Michael J. Renn. 2019-03-09. Water vapor assisted sintering of silver nanoparticle inks for printed electronics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-019-0542-0

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