Low-temperature, photonic approach to sintering the ink-jet printed conductive microstructures containing nano sized silver particles

Since the late eighties of the last century, digital ink-jet technology has been widely explored by the electronic industry in developing new manufacturing processes. Nowadays, ink-jet printing technology is increasingly being used to create the electrically conductive structures on flexible substrates. Ink for printing conductive microstructures is typically based on noble metals of nano-sized dimensions - mainly Ag. The structures are noncondcutive just after the printing. To obtain good electrical conductivity, they need an additional energy, mainly supplied during a heating process. Unfortunately relatively high temperature (~250°C) used for thermal sintering process can not be applied to most polymer substrates. Current paper focuses on low-temperature, photonic sintering process. The influence of different parameters like pulses number or distance between sample and lamp on the sintering process was analyzed.