Abstract
Over the past few decades, electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing has proved to be an environmentally friendly, cost-effective and powerful tool in manufacturing electronic devices with a wire width of less than 50 μm. In particular, EHD printing is highly valued for the printing of ultrafine wire-width silver electrodes, which is important in manufacturing large-area, high-resolution micron-scale or even nanoscale structures. In this paper, we compare two methods of surface modification of glass substrate: UV treatment and oxygen plasma treatment. We found that oxygen plasma was better than UV treatment in terms of wettability and uniformity. Secondly, we optimized the annealing temperature parameter, and found that the conductivity of the electrode was the highest at 200 °C due to the smoothing silver electrode and the oxidation-free internal microstructure. Thirdly, we used EHD printing to fabricate silver electrodes on the glass substrate. Due to the decrease of conductivity as a result of the skin effect and the decrease of silver content, we found that driving voltage dropped, line width decreased, and the conductivity of silver line decreased. After the optimization of the EHD printing process, Ag electrode line width and conductivity reached 19.42 ± 0.24 μm and 6.01 × 106 S/m, demonstrating the potential of electro-hydraulic printing in the manufacturing of flexible, wearable, high-density, low-power-consumption electronics.
Highlights
Microscale electrohydrodynamic printing (EHD) is a new micro/nano fabrication technology which has many advantages, such as low cost, simple structure, and direct forming without mask [1]
Traditional inkjet printing has the advantages of simple equipment, low cost, simple operation, and low material consumption, but the accuracy of printing is still not high, which limits the development of super-resolution printed displays [8]
EHD printing requires an electric field between the nozzle and the substrate, so that the ink at the nozzle is subjected to the electro-shear stress to form a Taylor cone
Summary
Microscale electrohydrodynamic printing (EHD) is a new micro/nano fabrication technology which has many advantages, such as low cost, simple structure, and direct forming without mask [1]. Due to these advantages, it is regarded as one of the best alternatives to the traditional lithography process. EHD printing requires an electric field between the nozzle and the substrate, so that the ink at the nozzle is subjected to the electro-shear stress to form a Taylor cone. The final wire width of the copper electrode was 61 μm [12] These studies indicate that EHD printing is an important method for the fabrication of micro/nanostructured devices. This paper uses low-viscosity ink to avoid needle blockage
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