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Low-temperature reducible particle-free screen-printable silver ink for the fabrication of high conductive electrodes

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Abstract

In this contribution, screen printing of aqueous based particle-free silver ink is addressed using combustion chemistry, where inks embody a redox mixture of silver nitrate and citric acid in the presence of a binder, sodium-carboxymethylcellulose. The exothermic reaction at ~ 176 °C results in the formation of pure silver. Screen-printing process is optimized for three different silver loadings (14%, 18% and 22%) in ink. In depth rheological study of the inks reveals thixotropic nature and the ink with 18% of silver possessing a viscosity of 328 Pa .s has a recovery rate of 84% at 110 s with a shear rate of 1 s−1. The deposited silver films (~ 3 µm thick) on both rigid-glass and flexible-polyamide substrates have shown an electrical conductivity of 4.2 × 106 S m−1 and 2.6 × 106 S m−1 respectively. Film adhesion on glass substrates categorized under 3B as per ASTM D-3359. Present screen-printed silver films find their application as a gate electrode in thin film transistors (TFTs). The TFTs comprising of indium zinc tin oxide–semiconductor and sodium β -alumina dielectric with screen-printed silver as a gate electrode exhibited the saturation mobility, on:off ratio and threshold voltage of 0.88 cm2 V−1 s−1, 102 and ~ 0.3 V respectively.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology, India (ECR/2015/000339) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, 575 025, India

    G. Manjunath, Pavan Pujar, Bikesh Gupta & Saumen Mandal

  2. Plastic Electronics and Energy Laboratory, Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, 400 076, India

    Pavan Pujar & Dipti Gupta

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  1. G. Manjunath
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Correspondence to Saumen Mandal.

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Manjunath, G., Pujar, P., Gupta, B. et al. Low-temperature reducible particle-free screen-printable silver ink for the fabrication of high conductive electrodes. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 30, 18647–18658 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-019-02217-9

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