• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.119-124
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• 2013

In this study, the two-dimensional transient temperature of printed Ag nanoparticle ink during continuous wave laser sintering was calculated. Ag nanoparticle ink was printed on a glass substrate by inkjet printing. Then, a 532-nm continuous wave laser with different laser intensities was irradiated on the printed Ag nanoparticle ink for 60 s. During laser irradiation, the in-situ specific resistance of the sintered ink was measured. To obtain the transient temperature of the sintered ink during the laser sintering process, a two-dimensional transient heat conduction equation was derived by applying the Wiedemann-Franz law. It was found that the specific resistance of the sintered ink decreased with an increase in the sintering temperature of the printed ink.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.89.2-89.2
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• 2007

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.135-139
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• 2015

We present a fine patterning method of conductive lines on polyimide (PI) and glass substrates using silver (Ag) nanoparticles based on laser scanning. Controlled laser irradiation can realize selective sintering of conductive ink without damaging the substrate. Thus, this technique easily creates fine patterns on heat-sensitive substrates such as flexible plastics. The selective laser sintering of Ag nanoparticles was managed by optimizing the conditions for the laser scan velocity (1.0-20 mm/s) and power (10-150 mW) in order to achieve a small gap size, high electrical conductivity, and fine roughness. The fabricated electrodes had a minimum channel length of $5{\mu}m$ and conductivity of $4.2{\times}10^5S/cm$ (bulk Ag has a conductivity of $6.3{\times}10^5S/cm$) on the PI substrate. This method was used to successfully fabricate an organic field effect transistor with a poly(3-hexylthiophene) channel.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.105-106
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• 2012

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.114.1-114.1
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• 2011

Electrical sintering of the front electrode for crystalline silicon solar cells was performed applying a constant DC current to the printed lines. Conducting lines were printed on glass substrate by a drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet printer and silver nanoparticle ink. Specific resistance and microstructure of sintered silver lines and were measured with varying DC current. To find the relation between temperature increase with changing applied current and specific resistance, temperature elevation was also calculated. Sintering process finished within a few milliseconds. Increasing applied DC current, specific resistance decreased and grain size increased after sintering. Achieved minimum specific resistance is approximately 1.7 times higher than specific resistance of the bulk silver.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.453-457
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• 2007

Interest in use of ink-jet printing for pattern-on-demand fabrication of metal interconnects without complicated and wasteful etching process has been on rapid increase. However, ink-jet printing is a wet process and needs an additional thermal treatment such as an annealing process. Since a metal ink is a suspension containing metal nanoparticles and organic capping molecules to prevent aggregation of them, the microstructure of an ink-jet printed metal interconnect 'as dried' can be characterized as a stack of loosely packed nanoparticles. Therefore, during being treated thermally, an inkjet-printed interconnect is likely to evolve a characteristic microstructure, different from that of the conventionally vacuum-deposited metal films. Microstructure characteristics can significantly affect the corresponding electrical and mechanical properties. The characteristics of change in microstructure and electrical resistivity of inkjet-printed silver (Ag) films when annealed isothermally at a temperature between 170 and $240^{\circ}C$ were analyzed. The change in electrical resistivity was described using the first-order exponential decay kinetics. The corresponding activation energy of 0.44 eV was explained in terms of a thermally-activated mechanism, i.e., migration of point defects such as vacancy-oxygen pairs, rather than microstructure evolution such as grain growth or change in porosity.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.439-444
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• 2022

Laser-induced plasmonic sintering of metal nanoparticles (NPs) is a promising technology to fabricate flexible conducting electrodes, since it provides instantaneous, simple, and scalable manufacturing strategies without requiring costly facilities and complex processes. However, the metal NPs are quite expensive because complicated synthesis procedures are needed to achieve long-term reliability with regard to chemical deterioration and NP aggregation. Herein, we report laser-induced Ag NP self-generation and sequential sintering process based on low-cost Ag organometallic material for demonstrating high-quality microelectrodes. Upon the irradiation of laser with 532 nm wavelength, pre-baked Ag organometallic film coated on a transparent polyimide substrate was transformed into a high-performance Ag conductor (resistivity of 2.2 × 10^-4 Ω·cm). To verify the practical usefulness of the technology, we successfully demonstrated a wearable transparent heater by using Ag-mesh transparent electrodes, which exhibited a high transmittance of 80% and low sheet resistance of 7 Ω/square.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.158-162
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• 2015

To substitute indium tin oxide (ITO), many substituents have been studied such as metal nanowires, carbon based materials, 2D materials, and conducting polymers. These materials are not good enough to apply to an electrode because theses exhibit relatively high resistance. So metal grids are required as an additionalelectrode to improve the conductivities of substituents. The metal grids were printed by electrohydrodynamic printing system using Ag nanoparticle based ink. The Ag grids showed high uniformity and the line width was about $10{\mu}m$. The Ag nanoparticles are surrounded by dispersants such as unimolecular and polymer to prevent aggregation between Ag nanoparticles. The dispersants lead to low conductivity of Ag grids. Thus, the sintering process of Ag nanoparticles is strongly recommended to remove dispersants and connect each nanoparticles. For sintering process, the interface and microstructure of the Ag grid were controlled in 1.0 torr Ar atmosphere at aound $400^{\circ}C$ of temperature. From the sintering process, the uniformity of the Ag grid was improved and the defects on the Ag grids were reduced. As a result, the resistivity of Ag grid was greatly reduced up to $5.03({\pm}0.10){\times}10^{-6}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$. The metal grids embedded substrates containing low pressure Ar sintered Ag grids showed 90.4% of transmittance in visible range with $0.43{\Omega}/{\square}$ of sheet resistance.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.454-462
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• 2023

Flash lamp annealing (FLA) of metal nanoparticle (NP) ink has provided powerful strategies to fabricate high-performance electrodes on a flexible substrate because of its rapid processing capability (in milliseconds), low-temperature process, and compatibility with to roll-to-roll process. However, metal NPs [e.g., gold (Au), silver (Ag), copper (Cu), etc.] have limitations such as difficulty in synthesizing fine metal NPs (diameter less than 10 nm), high price, and degradation during ink storage and FLA processing. In this regard, organometallic ink has been proposed as a material that can replace metal NPs due to their low-cost (usually 1/100 times cheaper than metal nano inks), low-temperature processability, and high material stability. Despite these advantages, the fabrication of flexible electrodes through FLA treatment of organometallic compounds has not been extensively researched. In this paper, we experimentally guide how to determine the optimal conditions for forming electrodes on flexible substrates by considering material parameters, and flashlight processing parameters (energy density, pulse duration, etc) to minimize the difficulties that may arise during the FLA of organometallic ink.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.293.1-293.1
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• 2016

Various materials including conductive, dielectric, and semi-conductive materials, constitute suitable candidates for printed electronics. Metal nanoparticles (e.g. Ag, Cu, Ni, Au) are typically used in conductive ink. However, easily oxidized metals, such as Cu, must be processed at low temperatures and as such, photonic sintering has gained significant attention as a new low-temperature processing method. This method is based on the principle of selective heating of a strongly absorbent film, without light-source-induced damage to the transparent substrate. However, Cu nanoparticles used in inks are susceptible to the growth of a native copper-oxide layer on their surface. Copper-oxide-nanoparticle ink subjected to a reduction mechanism has therefore been introduced in an attempt to achieve long-term stability and reliability. In this work, a flash-light sintering process was used for the reduction of an inkjet-printed Cu(II)O thin film to a Cu film. Using a photographic lighting instrument, the intensity of the light (or intense pulse light) was controlled by the charged power (Ws). The resulting changes in the structure, as well as the optical and electrical properties of the light-irradiated Cu(II)O films, were investigated. A Cu thin film was obtained from Cu(II)O via photo-thermal reduction at 2500 Ws. More importantly, at one shot of 3000 Ws, a low sheet resistance value ($0.2527{\Omega}/sq.$) and a high resistivity (${\sim}5.05-6.32{\times}10^{-8}{\Omega}m$), which was ~3.0-3.8 times that of bulk Cu was achieved for the ~200-250-nm-thick film.