The Influence of Sintering Conditions on the Inkjet Printed Paths Resistance

Abstract

Abstract-The sintering of elements performed with the inkjet printing technique is one of the stages of flexible printed circuit manufacturing process. It is a crucial factor to determining the printed paths conductivity playing often an important role in the printed circuit. In this paper the study of the influence of thermal sintering conditions (temperature, time) on the resistance of paths made with inkjet printing on flexible substrates by using two electrically conductive inks was presented. The results of the investigations show that the sintering temperature is the main factor determining the paths resistance. Therefore, in some applications the sintering temperature higher than the one specified by the ink manufacturer can be used to decrease the paths resistance and to improve some circuit parameters. However, it should be noticed that the effective resistance decrease occurs only up to a certain temperature due to the appearance cracks in the printed paths.

Inkjet-printed flexible RFID antenna for UHF RFID transponders

“…Despite the many mentioned advantages, the technological problems associated with resolution, deposition precision and material compatibility have to be overcome [8][9][10]. Therefore it seems necessary to conduct research works in order to popularize this technology.…”

Investigation of inkjet printed path resistance in the context of manufacture and flexible application

“…The result obtained by the authors in Lukacs et al (2017) for the same kind of ink confirms that using the lowest value of temperature recommended by the ink manufacturer is insufficient for achieving low sheet resistance. In turn, the authors’ previous studies on a different nanoparticle ink show that cracks appearing at a high temperature during the sintering process are very destructive and lead to an increase in path resistance (Tomaszewski et al , 2016a, 2016b; Lee et al , 2010). Therefore, in this research, when the use of the first sintering condition (220°C/1 h) was insufficient, the six packets of paths from A1 were used to find sintering conditions that give an acceptable sheet resistance value.…”

“…The main goal of this study was to obtain an answer to the question as to what the repeatability of inkjet printed paths in the manufacturing process is and how the properties of paths will change under the influence of environmental and mechanical exposures that may occur under typical application conditions. The basic assumption of this research is that the path as a simple element can be used to build a more complex structure like a radio-frequency identification antenna and results from the authors’ previous work (Tomaszewski et al , 2016a, 2016b; Jankowski - Mihułowicz et al , 2015). In those studies, the antennas were built from the paths with a width of about 1 mm.…”

“…The preliminary conditions for the sintering were set on the basis of the ink manufacturer datasheet (Amepox Microelectronics, 2012) at 220°C and 1 h. According to the note, this condition allows one to obtain relatively low electrical resistivity. The choice of a lower recommended temperature was conditioned by the results of the authors’ previous studies with a different type of nanoparticle ink (Lukacs et al , 2017; Tomaszewski et al , 2016a, 2016b). The sintering conditions were changed after the first unsatisfactory result for the path resistance had been obtained.…”

Optimal Design of Broadband Hexagonal Electromagnetic Metamaterial Absorber Unit Cells

“…전자 기파 메타물질 흡수체는 전도성 패턴 최적화를 바탕으로 광대역, 광각 흡수 성능을 구현할 수 있는 장점을 갖는다 [6]～ [11] . 하지만 [13] 기반의 타일링 [14] [15] , 패턴 두께  가 20 μm일 때 전도도 는 식 (1)을 이용하여 500 S/m로 계산된다 [16] . [17] .…”