Effects of electrohydrodynamic parameters on printing ultra-fine low-resistivity silver electrodes

Abstract

Electrodes, as signal transmission channels for microelectronic components, need to develop towards high precision. Among the existing printed electronic technologies, electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jet printing utilizes electric field force to control ink, enabling higher precision electrode processing. In this paper, the relationship between the printing parameters of EHD-printer and the morphology of the electrodes was investigated. With the decreasing of driving voltage and bias voltage, the line width of the silver electrode became more and more narrow. Silver electrodes with line width of 3.85 µm were fabricated through process optimization. In addition, with the annealing temperature rising, the resistivity of the electrode gradually decreased. The possible reason was that higher temperatures could not only increase the binding degree of silver nanoparticles, but also promote the removal of organic matter. Silver electrodes with resistivity of 13.63 µΩ cm were fabricated through process optimization, which showed an important application potential of the silver electrode printed by electrohydrodynamic inkjet printing.