Powder Bed Approach to 3D Printing of Structural Electronic Circuits

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to research the possibility of producing structural electronics with the powder bed Binder Jetting (BJ) technique. The adaptation of the BJ ZPrinter 450 printer for the deposition of silver nanoparticle inks and the fabrication of conductive paths using commercially available consumables was successfully carried out. The research included testing the influence of different orientations of the printed substrates for the conductive paths and also checking the dependence of the resistance on a number of printed nanoparticle ink layers. First, the measured average resistance value equal to 133.86 Ω was reached after 18 printed nanosilver ink layers. The best results have been obtained for 68 printed layers with an average resistance value of 4.64 Ω. The effect of the heat-treatment time and multiple sintering approaches of the prepared samples was also examined. The dependence of the sintering time on the resistance of the path turned out to be consistent with that encountered in the literature. Single sintering of the path with 33 nanosilver ink layers gave an average resistance value of 21.11 Ω. The same number of layers sintered 3 times during the process after several passes of the printhead gave the lowest resistance value of 1.89 Ω. Strength tests of the samples showed that the BJ is not suitable for the application of strain sensor fabrication. Despite this, the results of the study showed that high-efficiency printed electronics are possible to be fabricated using powder bed techniques, and there is a lot of room for future research.