Silver nanoparticle inks

Perelaer, J. et al Plasma and Microwave Flash Sintering of a Tailored Silver Nanoparticle Ink, Yielding 60% Bulk Conductivity on Cost-Effective Polymer Foils. In Journal of Advanced Material, Vol. 24, Issue 29 (2012), pp. 3993-3998. 

In particular, silver nanoparticles and occasionally gold nanoparticles are employed in inks due to their low electrical resistivity, low tendency toward oxidation, and generally high chemical stability. Other metal nanoparticles, such as copper and nickel particles, tend to oxidize and yield formulations that are less stable than silver and gold at ambient conditions. Carbon nanoparticles, which incorporate relatively inexpensive raw materials, are difficult to prepare in an industrial process and have higher resistivity than metal particles. Use of non-metal nanoparticles, such as silicon, for non-conductive electronic features, is also described in the literature on IJ inks. ... 

Reported volume resistivities for printed patterns formed from commercial silver-based inks are higher than that of bulk silver. This occurrence reflects the fact that sintered ink patterns contain non-ideal defects such as incomplete particle-to-particle contact, incomplete sintering between contacting particles, residual porosity, and the presence of non-conductive additives. The morphology and extent of void formation in two representative sintered silver nanoparticle inkjet inks are illustrated in Fig. 1. 

Ink formulations that can be used for the fabrication of solar cells have been described in detail (37). These are a silver back electrode ink, a zinc oxide nanoparticle ink, a polymeric ink from poly(3-hex-ylthiophen-2,5-diyl) and a fuUerene derivative, a PEDOT-KS, and a silver grid front electrode ink formulation. 

Ink-jet printing provides another opportunity to fabricate resistive humidity sensors. Different sensor configurations have been investigated using an ink with silver nanoparticles (Weremczuk et al., 2012). Likewise, thin film technologies were applied to develop resistive temperature elements onto Kapton strips, which were subsequently woven into a textile (Zysset, 2013). 

Magdassi, S., A. Bassa, Y. Vinetsky, and A. Kamyshny. 2003. Silver nanoparticles as pigments for water-based ink-jet inks. Chem. Mater. 15 (11) 2208-2217. 

Magdassi, S., A. Kamyshny, and M. Grouchko, 2006. Making connections Aqneons dispersions of silver nanoparticles from conductive inkjet inks. Eur. Coatings J. 11 54. 

Figure 12 Line width and height as a function of dot spacing for ink-jet-printed Cabot silver nanoparticles at room temperature onto glass substrates (a). Three-dimensional confocal microscopy images of the lines ink-jet printed with a dot spacing of 80,100, and 120 pm, respectively (b-d). Reprinted with permission from Perelaer, J. Ph D. thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netheriands, 2009. ...

Figure 16 Optical microscopy image of a single silver nanoparticle track on a hot-embossed polystyrene structure prepared from a 42 pm pitch line master. The original ink-jet-printed dot is located in the drawn circle. The top images show the line widths that are measured at the locations marked by the small arrows. Reprinted with permission from Hendriks, C. E. Smith, P. J. Perelaer, J. etal. Adv. Fund Mater. 2008, 18,1031. Copyright 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH Co.KGaA.

Figure 12.8. A photograph of a traditional roto-gravure label press that has a web width of 4 in. The press consists of a single gravure head that can be used to apply conductive inks, such as nanoparticle silver suspensions, onto surface-treated polymer substrates to generate patterned interconnects and electrodes.

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