Building flexible hybrid circuits with inkjet printer

Article By : University of Barcelona

Researchers in Spain have created an intelligent flexible hybrid circuit on paper, where different surface mounted devices were assembled by AgNP ink.

Researchers at the University of Barcelona have developed a bonding technique to build flexible hybrid circuits using an inkjet printer with silver nanoparticles ink.

In their report published in the Journal of Applied Physics, the team said they opted for nanoparticles of silver for inkjet ink because of their industrial availability. Silver is easily reproduced as nanoparticles into a stable ink that can easily be sintered, and even though silver is not cheap, the amount used was so scant that costs were kept low.

The challenge for the research team was to “do everything with the same equipment,” according to Javier Arrese, a member of the research team, improving or confirming the performance of standard manufacturing by using inkjet printing technology for the circuitry and bonding the chips.

“We developed several electronics circuits with inkjet printing, and many times we had to insert an SMD [surface mounted device] chip to reach the objectives,” Arrese said. “Our approach was to use the same machine for bonding that was used for the printed circuit.”

The biggest challenge was obtaining high electrical contact values for all the SMD size families. To do this, the team proposed using silver ink, printed by inkjet as assembling/soldering solution. The silver ink droplets were deposited close to the overlapping area between the SMD device pads and the printed bottom conductive paths, with the ink flowing through the interface by capillarity. This phenomenon works much like a sponge: The small voids of the sponge’s structure absorb liquid, allowing a fluid to be drawn up from a surface into the sponge. In this case, the thin interface acts as the small voids in the sponge.

By taking advantage of surface energies existing at the nanoscale, silver nanoparticle (AgNP) ink ensures high electrical conductivity after thermal process at very low temperatures, and thus a high electrical conductive interconnection can be achieved. Using this proposed method, an intelligent flexible hybrid circuit was demonstrated on paper, where different SMDs were assembled by AgNP ink, demonstrating the method’s reliability and feasibility.

__Figure 1:__ *(a) FESEM image of a cross-sectional view of one SMD pad Sn assembled. (b)–(d) FE-SEM images correspond to the details of the junction zone of the solder connector and AgNP inkjet-printed pad on paper, Kapton and glass substrates, respectively. (Source: American Institute of Physics)*

“There were many surprises in our research. One of them was how well bonded the SMD chips were to previous inkjet printed circuits using our new method as compared with the current standard technology,” Arrese said.

The applications and implications of this work could be far-reaching.

“We believe that our work will improve the existing RF [radio frequency] Tags, boost and promote smart packaging, enhance wearable electronics, flexible electronics, paper electronics… our results make us believe that everything is possible,” Arrese said.

Subscribe to Newsletter