Abstract
Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) and selective laser sintering (SLS) are two distinct laser processes that can be applied to metal nanoparticle (NP) ink for the fabrication of a conductive layer on various substrates. A pulsed laser and a continuous-wave (CW) laser are utilized respectively in the conventional LIFT and SLS processes; however, in this study, CW laser-induced transfer of the metal NP is proposed to achieve simultaneous sintering and transfer of the metal NP to a wide range of polymer substrates. At the optimum laser parameters, it was shown that a high-quality uniform metal conductor was created on the acceptor substrate while the metal NP was sharply detached from the donor substrate, and we anticipate that such an asymmetric transfer phenomenon is related to the difference in the adhesion strengths. The resultant metal electrode exhibits a low resistivity that is comparable to its bulk counterpart, together with strong adhesion to the target polymer substrate. The versatility of the proposed process in terms of the target substrate and applicable metal NPs brightens its prospects as a facile manufacturing scheme for flexible electronics.
Highlights
Wearable electronics such as skin-attachable medical devices may have a huge impact on our daily lives [1]
We introduce the CW laser-induced transfer of metal NP ink to tackle the preceding problems
It is noticeable that the proposed method possesses two differences compared to the conventional Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) process
Summary
Wearable electronics such as skin-attachable medical devices may have a huge impact on our daily lives [1]. Since the laser parameters are highly controllable, the SLS process was confirmed to be applicable to the creation of a metal layer on flexible substrates which are sensitive to heat. The SLS process was first applied to noble metal NPs such as gold (Au) [8] and silver (Ag) [9,10], but the range of applicable NPs is being expanded to include more cost-effective materials such as copper (Cu) [11,12] and nickel (Ni) [13,14] through the reductive sintering process
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