Selective Metallization Induced by Laser Activation: Fabricating Metallized Patterns on Polymer via Metal Oxide Composite

Abstract

Recently, metallization on polymer substrates has been given more attention due to its outstanding properties of both plastics and metals. In this study, the metal oxide composite of copper-chromium oxide (CuO·CrO) was incorporated into the polymer matrix to design a good laser direct structuring (LDS) material, and the well-defined copper pattern (thickness =10 μm) was successfully fabricated through selective metallization based on 1064 nm near-infrared pulsed laser activation and electroless copper plating. We also prepared polymer composites incorporated with CuO and CrO; however, these two polymer composites both had very poor capacity of selective metallization, which has no practical value for LDS technology. In our work, the key reasons causing the above results were systematically studied and elucidated using XPS, UV-vis-IR, optical microscopy, SEM, contact angle, ATR FTIR, and so on. The results showed that 54.0% Cu in the polymer composite of CuO·CrO (the amount =5 wt %) is reduced to Cu (elemental copper) after laser activation (irradiation); however, this value is only 26.8% for the polymer composite of CuO (the amount =5 wt %). It was confirmed that to achieve a successful selective metallization after laser activation, not only was the new formed Cu (the catalytic seeds) the crucial factor, but the number of generated Cu catalytic seeds was also important. These two factors codetermined the final results of the selective metallization. The CuO·CrO is very suitable for applications of fabricating metallic patterns (e.g., metal decoration, circuit) on the inherent pure black or bright black polymer materials via LDS technology, which has a prospect of large-scale industrial applications.

Percolation effect of a Cu layer on a MWCNT/PP nanocomposite substrate after laser direct structuring and autocatalytic plating

“…where u ¼ t/(t + q). The percolation behavior of the inverse sheet resistance of plastic-metal compound dened by eqn (6)- (8) was applied to explain our experimental data by ts in Fig. 2d.…”

“…[1][2][3][4] Fabrication of the monolithic integrated electric circuits on plastics is necessary for those application areas. Several methods are usually applied to make an electric circuit on plastic surfaces: laser-direct-imaging, 5 laserinduced selective activation (LISA) [6][7][8][9][10] and laser-directstructuring (LDS). [11][12][13][14] The LDS method was invented for metal deposition selectively on plastic surfaces.…”

Laser Activated and Electroless Metalized Polyurethane Coatings Containing Copper(II) L-Tyrosine and Glass Microspheres

“…These precursors can be organic and/or inorganic compounds of metals, especially copper in the case of selective copper plating. The most commonly used inorganic compounds are copper aluminum oxide [ 12 ], copper-chromium oxide [ 13 ], copper hydroxyl phosphate [ 14 ], whereas the effectiveness of organometallic compounds has been confirmed, e.g., palladium-acetate [ 15 ], copper acetate [ 16 ] and copper acetylacetonate [ 17 , 18 ]. The mechanism of laser activation is, on the one hand, ablation of the matrix and organic ligands when organometallic compounds are applied, and the reduction of these metal compounds to a metallic form on the other hand.…”

Comparative Evaluation of Cu(acac)2 and {[Cu(μ-O,O′-NO3) (L-arg) (2,2′-bpy)]·NO3}n as Potential Precursors of Electroless Metallization of Laser-Activated Polymer Materials

“…The information about palladium, copper or nickel acetates, acetylacetonates or copper complexes used as effective precursors of electroless metallization can be found in the literature [1,[12][13][14][15][16][17]. Inorganic metal compounds such as copper, chromium in the form of CuO•Cr2O3 [18] oxide or hydrogen phosphate Cu2(OH)PO4] [19] were also used. Beside copper compounds, antimony-doped tin oxide [20] or multi-wall MWCNT/PP carbon nanotubes [21] were added to the polymer matrix.…”