Adhesion of Inkjet Printed and Furnace-sintered Silver Nano-particle Ink on Various Substrates

Abstract

Printing electronics is a technology to make electronic devices by combining information communication technology and nanotechnology. Many studied have been conducted suggesting that the sintering mechanism, efficient process method, relationship of sintering temperature and resistivity have been studied. However, the study of adhesion of the printed and sintered ink on various substrate is an insufficient. In this study, adhesion behavior of furnace sintered silver nanoparticle (AgNp) inks on various substrates was investigated. The conductive lines were printed using an inkjet printer and thermally cured in a furnace at several temperatures. To observe the effect of substrates on the adhesion behavior of AgNp inks glass, polyimide, and polyethylene Naphthalate (PEN) were employed as substrates. The thermal stress of the conductive line was determined to investigate the effect of heat on the adhesion of each substrate. Micro scratch tester (MST) was used for the scratch test to measure the adhesive force. From this test critical load was determined for each case and the critical load was defined as the smallest load at which failures occurred. Furthermore, critical shear stress was used to analyze the difference in adhesion. Finally, the focused-ion beam (FIB) cross-sectional images were obtained to observe morphologies at the boundaries between the sintered ink line and the substrates.