Effects of the Particle Size and the Solvent in Printing Inks on the Capacitance of Printed Parallel-Plate Capacitors

Parallel-plate capacitors were fabricated using a printed multi-layer structure in order to determine the effects of particle size and solvent on the capacitance. The conductive-dielectric-conductive layers were sequentially spun using commercial inks and by intermediate drying with the aid of a masking polymeric layer. Both optical and scanning electron microscopy were used to characterize the morphology of the printed layers. The measured capacitance was larger than the theoretically calculated value when ink with small-sized particles was used as the top plate. Furthermore, the use of a solvent whose polarity was similar to that of the underlying dielectric layer enhanced the penetration and resulted in an increase in capacitance. The functional resistance-capacitance low-pass filter was implemented using printed resistors and capacitors, a process that may be scalable in the future.