Fabrication of RC filters from a single printed Zn layer by reactive inkjet printing

Abstract

This paper presents the development of planar zinc (Zn) resistor-capacitor (RC) filters from a single printed layer that are both printed and treated at room temperature. The fabrication process involves screen printing the resistor, capacitor and interconnects in a single patterned layer on kraft paper substrates using a Zn microparticle ink. In order to form a distinct resistor and capacitor in the patterned structure, reactive inkjet printing was performed to selectively dispense acetic acid on the RC filter pattern to achieve regions with highly contrasting resistance. The required high degree of spatial contrast was achieved using the positional control of the inkjet printer combined with the number of print passes and drop spacing used to dispense the acetic acid droplets. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy showed the crystal structure and grain size of Zn microparticles remained unchanged with increasing acetic acid exposure while the prominence of cold-welding increased with increasing exposure. Zn-based RC filters sharing a common set of dimensions but with a wide range of corner frequencies were successfully fabricated using this process. For a fixed filter geometry, the corner frequencies could be tuned from ~7 kHz to ~1 MHz as the number of print passes used to form the resistor increased in a stepwise manner. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first room temperature printing process to produce side-by-side resistors and conductors from the same printed layer and the first printing process of any type to produce RC filters with such a wide range of corner frequencies.