Development of Silver Nanoparticle Ink for Printed Electronics

Printable conductors with high conductivity would be critical for low-cost printed electronics. In view of printability, conductivity, and electrical stability, metal such as gold or silver derived from solution-deposited precursor compositions would be an ideal candidate. Xerox has been exploring the use of silver nanoparticles as conductor precursor composition for printed electronics. This paper reviews our research in the development of alkylamine-stabilized silver nanoparticles that can be sintered at low temperature (∼ 120 °C) for high conductivity (>10000 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.