Direct Writing Highly Conductive Silver Pattern on Flexible Substrate Based on Particle-Free and Ionic Liquid-Assisted Ink

Abstract

Abstract Particle-free silver inks have the advantage of low sintering temperature, high stability, and easy synthesis over traditional nanoparticle-based silver inks, which have been widely applied in the printing electronic industry. In this paper, we develop a novel particle-free and ionic liquid-assisted silver ink consisting of silver acetate and formic acid/iso-propanolamine liquid that can be used to print highly conductive silver patterns at low sintering temperatures. A variety of continuous and consistent silver circuits with a resistivity of 7.7 µΩ·cm can be printed by a dispenser machine, which is only 4.8 times bulk silver. Furthermore, the low-resistivity silver patterns can be also printed on the flexible polyimide foil, which maintains the stability of resistivity and mechanical properties after bending multiple times, demonstrating that our ionic liquid-assisted silver ink can be applied in flexible electronic devices. Besides, our particle-free silver ink can be utilized to write electric circuits directly with a ball-point pen.