Combustion-Assisted Photonic Annealing of Printable Graphene Inks via Exothermic Binders

High-throughput and low-temperature processing of high-performance nanomaterial inks is an important technical challenge for large-area, flexible printed electronics. In this report, we demonstrate nitrocellulose as an exothermic binder for photonic annealing of conductive graphene inks, leveraging the rapid decomposition kinetics and built-in energy of nitrocellulose to enable versatile process integration. This strategy results in superlative electrical properties that are comparable to extended thermal annealing at 350 degrees C, using a pulsed light process that is compatible with thermally sensitive substrates. The resulting porous microstructure and broad liquid-phase patterning compatibility are exploited for printed graphene micro-supercapacitors on paper-based substrates.