Introduction of new technology Aerosol copper inkjet printing
Copper has always been the conductive metal of choice in the printed circuit board industry. Today, however, silver has become the main metallic ink used in the printing of a large number of current products, as well as the primary metallic ink in all other printed electronic applications. These current products include ultra high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) antennas, membrane keyboards, battery testers and flexible displays.
Unfortunately, it is expected that in the next few years, the cost of silver will enter an exponential growth, and the demand for low-cost and high-quality metallic inks will emerge.
In principle, copper has excellent electrical conductivity, so it can be used instead of silver in most of the above applications; however, printing metal inks must overcome many challenges, including purity, oxidation, particle size, and dispersion quality.
As part of the strategic cooperation, Applied Nanotech (ANI) is developing metal printing inks that meet the requirements of Optomec Aerosol inkjet printing solutions. The Optomec Aerosol inkjet system is ideal for printing ANI metallic inks on flexible solid substrates. Aerosol inkjet printing system has a wide range of plate viscosity, suitable for a variety of conformal agents, dispersants, additives and copper filler applications. Optomec and ANI jointly demonstrated how to combine ANI metal ink with a simple sintering system to provide excellent metal traces on various substrates.
These metallic inks have very good compatibility with flexible substrates, and they flow smoothly for use in Optomec systems. Users can process these inks in air without the use of external inert gas; the drying temperature of these inks is less than 100 degrees Celsius and shows a stable final metal conduction trace, making the ANI / Optomec solution the search for a complete metal ink The ideal solution.
Because ANI continues to expand the loading range and create excellent ink copper nanoparticle dispersion quality, copper nanoparticle ink was selected for initial testing. By adopting a patented production technology that produces enough copper nanoparticles, ANI has made the above breakthroughs. These copper nanoparticles have predetermined characteristics and contain selected ink formulation conformers and dispersants.
A major advantage of these nanoparticle copper inks is that they can be quickly sintered by electromagnetic radiation, such as the use of lasers in room temperature air to continuously provide traces of metal conduction, and achieve a low resistance coefficient in the micro-ohm-cm range.
These conductive metals can also be firmly attached to the surface of various flexible substrates. This addition process, which involves performing Aerosol inkjet printing first, followed by simple sintering, provides manufacturers with a fast and economical method for printing electronic circuits on a wide range of substrate surfaces. The Optomec system can be used to configure and print organic solvent-based and water-based conductive metal inks.
The Optomec system can deliver aerosol droplets ranging in size from 1 micron to 5 microns with a dispensing speed of 0.25 microliters per second, and can print line widths from 10 microns to 150 microns. Using ANI copper ink, 30 micron wide copper wire can be printed on the glass substrate.
The Optomec system and ANI inks can also be used on Capton (polyimide) substrates and generate sintered copper wires 60 microns wide and 8 microns thick.
ANI ink can firmly adhere to the Kapton substrate. The Optomec system has a large viscosity range (between 0.7 centipoise and 2500 centipoise), which facilitates the rapid printing and sintering of various metal inks and metal pastes, thus meeting the wide application needs of the printed electronics industry in the future.
INCHEE FURNITURE CO.,LTD , https://www.incheefurniture.com