Low temperature sintering of inkjet printed metal precursor inks for organic electronic applications

As a nascent technology that developed during the last decades from only printing text and graphics into an important scientific research tool for R&D, inkjet printers are nowadays used as a highly reproducible non-contact patterning tool. In contrast to non-digital patterning tools, inkjet printing represents an additive technique that requires only small amounts of functional materials and is therefore characterized as being a highly efficient materials patterning technique. In particular, inkjet printing of metal precursor materials has been used more and more during the last few years, in order to produce conductive features for plastic electronic applications. Here, we present our recent results in the sintering of inkjet printed metal nanoparticle dispersion on cost-effective polymer foils. In order to sinter the particles at speeds that are compatible with roll-to-roll speeds, we have used combinations of innovative sintering methods. Conductivity values between 40 and 60% were hereby obtained in a few seconds to minutes by using either photonic or plasma pre-sintering followed by microwave flash sintering.