Green approach to prepare silver nanoink with potentially high conductivity for printed electronics

A new strategy was described for green preparation of silver nanoink with potentially high conductivity for printed electronics. Silver nanoparticles in the ink were characterized by visible ultraviolet spectrophotometer (UV‐vis), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), size distribution analysis (SDA), X‐Ray Diffractomer (XRD) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Silver thin film was investigated by SEM and 4‐point probe. It can be found that silver nanoparticles are of small sizes about 2.1 ± 0.5 nm in diameter, with a low melting point of about 105°. It also can be concluded that continuous silver thin film has formed, and an integrated conductive track has been fabricated. Especially, when the solid content is up to 9 wt.% and the sintering condition is 200° for 30 minutes in air, the resistivity can decrease to 8.1 µΩ·cm, 4.9 times the bulk silver resistivity. In addition, the application of silver nanoink in conductive patterns on polyimide (PI) substrate was also studied by inkjet printing. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.