High‐Resolution Patterning of Conductive Microstructures by Electrostatic Deposition of Aerosol Au Nanoparticles through the Dielectric Mask

Abstract

A new approach of electrostatically focusing nanoparticles through an electrical tape mask to form narrow <10 μm and conductive microstructures is developed and investigated in this work. The presented approach is similar to deposition of material through a stencil and allows one to obtain lines 15 times smaller than the width of the gap in the mask. It is proposed to use ordinary polyvinyl chloride (PVC) electrical tape as a mask instead of expensive photo or electronic resists. The work investigates the influence of a mask thickness (height) of 60–180 μm, a gap width of 120–380 μm, a substrate potential of 0.1–5 kV, and a deposition time of 10 and 120 min on the geometry and electrical properties of the lines. Charged Au nanoparticles 60 nm in size synthesized by spark discharge are the building blocks of microstructures. Numerical modeling of the process of focusing nanoparticles in COMSOL qualitatively confirms the found experimental dependencies. The electrical resistivity of the sintered lines is 6.34 times higher than that of bulk gold. The developed approach makes it possible to obtain high‐aspect microstructures and supports operation at atmospheric pressure.