Session 19: Conductors

Versatile Molecular Silver Ink Platforms for Printed Electronics
Thursday, February 15, 2018
2:05 PM - 2:25 PM

Silver-based conductive molecular inks compatible with screen printing will be presented that offer an alternative to traditional flake-based inks. These unique inks can be processed with thermal or photonic energy to produce traces with resistivities as low as 3 times bulk silver conductivity and sub-micron thicknesses, enabling the resolution of traces as narrow as 42 μm separated by 38 μm. In addition, the resulting traces are mechanically robust to both flexing and creasing and stable against ion migration. We will also demonstrate that this molecular ink can be easily reformulated to enable aerosol jet, plotter-based and inkjet printing, the latter of which can be used to produce source/drain and gate electrode for high mobility, all-printed transistors on flexible substrates. The inks also demonstrate potential for stretchable and in-mold electronics applications where traces printed on stretchable substrates remain conductive up to strains as high as 126% and can be thermoformed to generate conductive 3D traces. The development of these new functional inks should provide a viable alternative to flake inks for emerging application areas such as in-mold electronics and high resolution antenna and transparent conductive electrodes for displays.