Optimisation of Operational Parameters in Atmospheric Plasma Deposition

Abstract

Nowadays additive manufacturing and 3D printing techniques are transferring in the mainstream industrial use. To compete for the share of the pie in this sector, atmospheric plasma can be used for deposition of material. In this work it will be presented the atmospheric plasma deposition of copper nanoparticles and the influence of the plasma operational parameters on the shape of the deposited copper line: the with and the density. The nanoparticles were produced by a facile aqueous-based seed-mediated chemical reduction method from copper nitrate hemi(pentahydrate), as described in article by Ankireddy et al. 1 The copper nanoparticles had bimodal size distribution with mean diameters of 3.6 and 64.6 nm. The nanoparticles were then dispersed in deionised water, caped with citric acid and used as a source for atmospheric plasma deposition. The plasma system comprised from nebuliser, nozzle and kHz power supply, as in the work of Gandhiraman et al. 2 During the plasma deposition of the particles the substrate was moving by XY step-motor stage. Parameters, that could be set and influenced the deposition were: gas mixture (different ratios of Ar and He gas flows), gas flow-rate, distance of the substrate from the plasma, plasma power, time between steps of XY stage and the number of passes/repetitions by XY stage. Different permutations of the parameters were used for the plasma deposition to determine the best parameter set for a dense deposition of a narrow line.In figure it can be seen two depositions with different parameters. The difference is obvious.[1] „Seed Mediated Copper Nanoparticle Synthesis for Fabricating Oxidation Free Interdigitated Electrodes using Intense Pulse Light Sintering for Flexible Printed Chemical Sensors“; Krishnamraju Ankireddy, Thad Druffel, Swathi Vunnam, Gregor Filipič, Ruvini Dharmadasa, Delaina A. Amos; Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 5 (2017), 11128 – 11137[2] „Plasma jet based in situ reduction of copper oxide in direct write printing“; Avishek Dey, Arlene Lopez, Gregor Filipič, Aditya Jayan, Dennis Nordlund, Jessica Koehne, Satheesh Krishnamurthy, Ram P. Gandhiraman, M. Meyyappan; Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, 37 (2019), 031203 Figure 1