Development of Silver Nanoparticle Ink for Printed Electronics

Printable conductors with high conductivity are critical for low-cost printed electronics. From the view of printability, conductivity, and electrical stability, an ideal candidate would be a metal such as gold or silver derived from solution-deposited precursor compositions. We have been exploring the use of silver nanoparticles as the conductor precursor for printed electronics. This paper reviews our research in the development of alkylamine-stabilized silver nanoparticles that can be sintered at a low temperature (∼120°C) for high conductivity (>10,000 S/cm). Silver nanoparticle ink formulations based on these silver nanoparticles exhibit surface-energy independent printability, which enables the fabrication of high-performance top-contact transistor devices, and self-assembly characteristic when printed on hydrophilic substrates, which allows for large-area, defect-free source/drain arrays to be printed with a narrow and uniform channel length.