Masterclass conductive printing

1. © IML 2012
MasterClass – Future of Conductive Printing
November 27 - Belgium
Making a Material Difference …
© IML 2012

2. © IML 2012
• Introduction
• Technical Background – IML
• Main factors
• Principle of Photonic Curing
• Process Options – Broadband Flash or Laser
• New Developments
• Examples
• Summary
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• Founded as a QinetiQ corporate investment in
January 2002 – QinetiQ Nanomaterials Ltd
• Spun out in 2007
• Locations:
• Farnborough, UK (R&D, Production and BD
Europe)
• Rochester, NYS, USA (Development and
Production)
• Team of 30 - 80% technical/scientific
• Technology Platform
• Fabrication of Inorganic Nanoparticles
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• Major difference between conventional inks and PE
• Functionality of the ink and the track it produces
• Must be capable of joining / folding / flexibility / survive
environmental issues / multilayers / post processing / packaging
• Must be capable of integration with other technologies
• Will stretch the capabilities of print technology
• screen printing and Inkjet lead at this point
• And stretch to other applications - many and varied
• Conversion from a track to a conductive track is a key issue
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Materials Design / Integration
• CuO Substrate
• Coated Copper
• Silver
Print Technology Application
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Materials Design / Integration
• CuO Substrate
• Coated Copper
• Silver
Suite of Sintering Technologies are
required to address the issues
Print Technology Application
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Huge impact on low temperature
Nano substrates with corresponding
enabled
cost implications
Performance *
Inks
Cost
Low Temp
Screen
Typical
Screen
Temperature
* More than conductivity – adhesion, surface roughness etc
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Huge impact on low temperature
Nano substrates with corresponding
enabled
cost implications
Performance *
Inks
Cost
```
Low Temp
Screen ````````````
Typical
Screen
Temperature
* More than conductivity – adhesion, surface roughness etc
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Materials Formulation Printing Drying Sintering Device
Requirement
• Conversion of printed ink to a conductive track
• High Performance
• Fast – suit R2R speeds
• No damage to substrate
• Flexible – multiple print types (inkjet, screen etc)
• Large area / thin tracks / large area + thin tracks
• Various substrate (glass, paper, ceramic, composites, high
thermal mass)
• Compatible with industry standard practices
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• Ovens
• Standard practice / conventional approach - Silver
• Uniformity
• Wide area of processing /
• Substrate limited to temperature
• Long residence time -> inert atmosphere
• UV Curing
• Wide area of processing
• Standard practice
• Lower intensity, continuous output
Widely adopted proven technology
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• Broadband flash
• High power densities / wide area of
processing
• Less substrate limited and curing times short
Photonic Curing
• Adjustable spectrum / tunable pulse lengths
• High capital cost for some systems / beam
not uniform
• Laser
• High Power densities
• Exposure area smaller /
• Fixed wavelength but targeted wavelength to
match ink requirements / uniform across the
beam / Spatial selectivity - targeted
© IML 2012 • Cost / rastering

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• High energy pulse - broadband or specific
wavelength
• Targeted Rapid thermal heating of surface
Energy
layers
• Solvent / coating escape
• Converts nanomaterial into highly linked Wavelength
structure
• Careful control of energy levels gives:-
• High conductivity
• No surface damage to substrate
• Compatibility with low temperature
substrates
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Broadband Laser
Pulsed Pulsed or
Energy
continuous
Broadband – can Fixed narrow
be modified - wavelength
different lamp Wavelength
options for modified
output sintered
Output varies by Precision control of
wavelength output
Energy delivered is Coherent beam
not consistent therefore ease of unsintered
focus, pointing and
control
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• Example – Sinteron™ 2000
• Features
• Selectable pulse duration – 100 to
2000 µm
• Adjustable Pulse energy 27 to 2000
Joules
• Multiple modes – single, double,
burst, continuous
• Sintering area 1.9 x 30.5cm
• www.xenoncorp.com
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• Example - Pulseforge™ 3300
• For development and production –
R2R
• Features
• Broad spectrum 200nm to 1000nm
• Max peak power 100kW/cm2
• Sustained peak greater than 5MW on
15cm wide
• Exposures down to 30 µsec
• Pulse repetition rate >1kHz
• www.novacentrix.com
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• Limited commercial offering at Laboratory System
this point
• Wide range of lasers and
generic expertise available
• Some developments
underway
• Commercial
• Government sponsored
• IML developing a range of
approaches in response to
customer demand
LAPS 60 System
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• LOPE-C Conference Dusseldorf
2 m/min – nano copper ink deposited by a new
Fuji-Dimatix ink jet head, then dried & sintered
using broadband flash
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RFID on paper or PET / laser 4µm lines / laser
Test lines 75µm, on
PET / laser
Test on Kapton / laser Automotive sensor on composite panel / laser
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CEMLED
• Combination of IM ink and
PROCID Cambridge Nanotherm high
• Antibody based disease detection performance substrates for
programme LED’s
• Developed on gold/glass
• Not economical / difficult to take to
product
• PROCID programme developing
copper electrodes
• Screen / inkjet printed
• Laser / Broadband flash
processed
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• Broadband Flash
• Novacentrix – software
development
• Enhanced Modelling & Control
• Laser
• LAPS60 supplied to customers
for R&D development
• LAP1200 system in
development
• Scale up of LAPS 60
• High power laser screen to
process wider images
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• To increase speed of adoption of low cost conductive inks, cost
effective sintering processes are needed
• Current sintering technologies achieve the required performance
• High performance tracks manufactured
• Sintering tools are available in both oven / broad band flash
• Barrier to uptake is lack of cost effective sintering systems at the
R&D stage
• Growing interest in laser application
• IML has set out to support our customer base with a range of
validated laser sintering tools
• These are now available ….
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Thank you!
Contact:
Dr Paul Reip
Director, Government and Strategic Programmes
paulreip@intrinsiqmaterials.com
mobile: +44 (0)7785 382 293
© IML 2012