Low cost room temperature curable alumina ink for printed electronic applications

Abstract

A low cost, room temperature curable alumina ink has been prepared by non-aqueous route. The ink is printed on flexible biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate (BoPET) substrate as well as on photographic paper. The dielectric constant of the printed alumina on BoPET film is found to be 3.29 and 3.26 at 5 and 15 GHz respectively with a dielectric loss of the order of 10–3. The printed alumina layer (without substrate) has a dielectric constant of 4.54 and loss tangent 0.010 at 15 GHz. The temperature coefficient of dielectric constant for alumina ink with BoPET substrate and alumina ink with photographic paper are 60 and 66 ppm/°C respectively. The variation of dielectric constant and loss tangent with the thickness of the printed layer is also investigated. The results indicate that the alumina dielectric ink can be used as a potential candidate for future printed electronic applications.