Evaluation of PulseForge Tool for Processing Metallic Conductive Inks on Low Temperature Substrates Part II: Screen Inks

At this event in 2009, the authors discussed the need for advanced tooling and materials for printed electronics device development and manufacturing. We went on to describe and evaluate a novel toolset called PulseForge® which is based on photonic curing and capable of drying and sintering metallic-based inks on low-temperature substrates in milliseconds. Example inks manufactured by NovaCentrix used in the initial evaluation were silver and copper-based inkjet inks, with nanoparticles as the functional material. These inks were only 100's of nm thick when printed and dried. As part of on-going work, the authors are now presenting the same toolset applied to thicker screen print inks of silver and copper. A PulseForge 3100 in 12-inch width configuration is used to process improved silver screen ink on PET, and a new copper-based screen ink on copy paper. The tools produce equal or improved results over oven processing. Additionally, we demonstrate the PulseForge tools can process material at speeds consistent with volume manufacturing.