Direct ink-jet printing and low temperature conversion of conductive silver patterns

A drop-on-demand ink-jet printer has been used in the production of conductive silver tracks onto glass, polyimide, polytetrafluoroethylene, carbon and glass fibre reinforced epoxy substrates. Silver patterns were obtained from an organometallic solution by heat treatment at 150◦C in air and were found to have resistivity values of 1.3 to 2 times the theoretical resisitivity of bulk silver. Printed track lateral resolution is a function of the ink/substrate wetting behaviour and a simple model is presented that relates track width to equilibrium contact angle. The influence of printing parameters and substrate surface properties on line quality is discussed. C 2006 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc