Fine metal line patterning on hydrophilic non-conductive substrates based on electrohydrodynamic printing and laser sintering

• There are two problems to solve for EHD patterning on a non-conductive substrate.
• The scattering effect caused by the charges accumulated on the printed lines.
• The unwanted thermal effect around patterned lines during sintering.
• We study the optimal conditions for curbing of the scattering effect.
• We applied a laser beam, directly to the fine metal lines for sintering.

We present a electrohydrodynamic (EHD) fine metal line patterning on a hydrophilic non-conductive substrate for the repair of flat panel displays. There are two crucial problems to solve for fine metal line patterning: 1) The scattering effect caused by the charges accumulated on the printed lines, 2) the unwanted thermal effect around patterned lines during sintering. We found that the scattering can be curbed by optimizing head parameters, and the unwanted thermal effect around patterned lines by directly applying laser sintering to printed lines. We achieved a 3 μm width of metal line patterns with the electrical resistivity of 17.48 μΩ cm.