Conductive lithium nickel oxide thin film patterns via inkjet printing technology

• Conductive lithium nickel oxide patterns are fabricated via inkjet printing method.
• The precursor inks decompose into oxides at temperatures higher than 420 °C.
• Surface morphology and crystal structures of the sintered thin films are examined.
• Electrical resistivity of the oxide thin films obeys the Arrhenius relation.
• An activation energy of 0.38 eV is found in the Arrhenius relation.

In this research, a simple direct-writing method by inkjet printing to create conductive lithium nickel oxide thin film patterns at micrometer-scale is presented. Nickel/lithium hydroxides dissolved in acetic acid were inkjet-printed on quartz plates to create micro patterns, including lines and meshes, and converted into oxides by thermal pyrolysis. The synthesized thin films were composed of nanoparticles with 60 nm diameter after the sintering process. Thermogravimetric analysis results showed that the precursor inks decomposed into oxides at temperatures higher than 420 °C. The X-ray diffractograms showed that Ni2O3 was synthesized with lithium oxides after sintered at 500 °C for an hour. The existence of Ni2O3 in the prepared thin films leads to better electrical conductivity, which follows the Arrhenius relation with activation energy of 0.38 eV.