Fine resolution drop-on-demand electrohydrodynamic patterning of conductive silver tracks on glass substrate

This paper presents the fine resolution printing of the silver patterns on the thick glass substrates, deposited through drop-on-demand electrohydrodynamic jetting by applying the pulsed voltage. The patterning is performed by ejecting ink containing silver nanoparticles through a 10 mu m internal diameter glass capillary. The variations in patterns sizes are studied by changing the operating parameters and after sintering of deposited patterns on a 500 mu m thick glass substrate. The minimum droplet diameter achieved is approximately 3.6 mu m after the sintering process, which is 2.78 times smaller than the size of the capillary's internal diameter. The patterns are formed by suitable overlapping of droplets by adjusting the substrate speed and minimum pattern width achieved is 6.5 mu m, which is the major attraction of electrohydrodynamic printing technology. The functionality of the deposited silver patterns is measured through I-V curve and shows linear Ohmic behavior with good resistivity. The experimental results indicate that the electrohydrodynamic printing can be used for fabricating fine resolution patterns of conductive tracks on thick substrate for printed electronics applications.