AC-pulse modulated electrohydrodynamic jet printing and electroless copper deposition for conductive microscale patterning on flexible insulating substrates

This paper presents a novel micro-manufacturing method for fabrication of electrical features and patterns on highly insulating substrates and flexible substrates based on high-resolution AC-pulse modulated electrohydrodynamic jet (e-jet) printing of silver nanoink as seed layer followed by electroless copper deposition. Traditional ink jet printing method is limited in printing resolution which is determined by dimension of printing nozzle and dimension of droplets. Traditional e-jet printing has the disadvantage of residual charge problem especially for highly insulating substrates which cannot dredge remained charge of printed droplets, resulting in distorted electrostatic field and low printing controllability. Meanwhile, for printing of liquid phase ink, feature resolution contradicts with the required thickness, which is a key factor of conductivity of printed patterns. In this paper, a novel AC-modulated e-jet printing technique is applied to neutralize charges on substrates by switching polarity of consequent droplets for direct printing of high-resolution conductive silver patterns on insulating substrates. Electroless copper deposition is introduced in the fabrication process to solve the thickness problem of the resulting features. Variables of fabrication process, including amplitude and frequency of AC-pulsed voltage, plotting speed, curing temperature, number of layers, concentration of solution for copper growth, were identified to achieve reliable and conductive printed patterns. Sub-20 µm silver tracks with resistivity about 3.16 times of bulk silver were successfully fabricated. We demonstrated that ac-pulse modulated e-jet printing followed by electroless copper deposition can produce high resolution conductive patterns with improved thickness on insulating substrates and flexible substrates, which can be applied to direct printing and micro scale patterning for flexible electronics and wearable devices applications.