Ultrasonic-Assisted Sintering of Silver Nanoparticles for Flexible Electronics

Abstract

A silver nanoparticle sintering method is promising for the fabrication of flexible electronics. An ultrasonic-assisted sintering process is presented to obtain conductive patterns with low resistivity on a paper-based substrate. Compared to the conventional hot-pressing sintering process, the proposed method can efficiently fabricate densified microstructures with better electrical properties at low temperature and pressure. In particular, the effects of ultrasonic effective time, entry time, and amplitude were systematically analyzed. It was found that lower resistivity preferred larger ultrasonic amplitude. The ultrasonic effective time happened during the first 3 min of the entire sintering process, which implied that the ultrasonic synergetic effect occurred at the very beginning stage of the sintering process. Additionally, better conductivity of the sintered patterns was obtained when the ultrasonic entry time was shorter. The mechanism of the synergetic effect of ultrasonic sintering was also disc...