Abstract. Conductive ink has been widely used in many application of electronic parts. It normally comes in liquid form and will need to be cured usually by conventional oven or laser irradiation after it is drawn to expose its metallic contents. But, these curing processes suffer from numerous problems consist of laser is a costly process and a warping defect when cured using conventional oven. Thus, alternative process is prominent and DLP projector has been seen capable of polymerised photopolymer materials. By making use of its potential associated with a proper control of the light intensity, exposure time and distance, it could provides sufficent heat to cure conductive ink. This study investigates the curing process of silver conductive ink on polymer substrate using DLP projector light with a variation of curing time and distance. Electrical resistance, hardness and adhesion level of cured sample were measured to determine its functionality. The conductive ink is deposited on the substrate using doctor blade method and Microsoft Powerpoint slide is used to shape the light image produced by the projector. It was found that the conductivity and curing level of the sample cured were higher at the distance which getting the sharpest light image. The performances of the samples were also greater as the curing time increased. DLP projector is able to cure the conductive track efficiently with shorter curing time apart from the cheap preparation and setup cost.
This study is to investigate the curing of silver conductive ink tracks on fabrics using a combination of direct light projector (DLP) and hot plate since conventional curing process using laser and oven suffer from several weaknesses mainly costly process and warping defect. The fabrics used are made from nylon and polyester while silver conductive inks were used for the entire study. Samples were made by coating the fabrics with rubber dye inks using silkscreen process and conductive inks were manually laid out on top of the rubber dye according to the designated pattern. A Microsoft power point slide is used to shape the light image on top of the hot plate where the sample is located. Variation of curing time and temperature with constant curing distance were investigated. Several mechanical and electrical tests were conducted to determine the cure, hardness, adhesion and resistance level of the ink tracks. The results obtained were as expected which the longer curing time taken and a higher temperature used, a lower resistance is produced. It is proven that a combination of projector and hot plate is capable of curing the ink tracks properly, a cheap process and easy to handle.
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