<p><i>Aerosol Jet Printing is a promising technology for expanding fields such as printable electronics. It is compatible with a wide range of inks and can be printed on nearly any type of surface topology due to its 3-5 mm standoff distance from the substrate. However, nearly all printed inks require some form of post sintering processing to achieve reasonable electrical conductivity. While several companies manufacture inks for aerosol jet printing, they only provide a narrow range of post processing results to demonstrate the achievable conductivity data. In this paper, a design of experiment (DOE) strategy using Van der Pauw printed pads (using an Optomec Aerosol Jet Engine) is presented which can be applied to characterizing any conductive ink. We focus on a silver nano particle ink from Clariant and monitor its conductivity under various thermal curing conditions (using a Lindeberg Blue M oven), including temperature and time. From these collected experimental conductivity results, a linear regression model is used to develop an equation that predicts the expected conductivity of the printed ink over a relatively wide “time-temperature” design space. Such a characterization process and predictive equation are extremely useful for applications involving limited or restricted thermal budgets, such as flexible electronics.</i></p>

Characterizing the Conductivity of Aerosol Jet Printed Silver Features on Glass

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/MSEC/MSEC2021/volume/85062

2021 International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC2021)

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