Amphiphilic silver particles for conductive inks with controlled wetting behavior

Silver inks find applications in printed electronics as conductive electrodes. Amphiphilic silver microparticles are prepared by modifying PAA-capped particles with functional amines via an amidation reaction. These modified silver particles can be dispersed in a wide variety of solvents ranging from water (epsilon = 80.4) to lipophilic alcohols (epsilon = 3-17) to yield conductive inks with tunable wettability. Using these inks, we have demonstrated aerosol jet printing of conductive silver patterns (36 mu m wide, 1.2 mu m thick) on Kapton. Electrical resistivity of 3.7 mu Omega cm is obtained after thermal annealing at 225 degrees C for 5 min. Similar electrical resistivity (3.9 mu Omega cm) is achieved after photonic annealing as short as 1 ms at 1.4 KV. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.