Coating 1-Octanethiol-Coated Copper Nano-Ink on a Paper Substrate via Multi-Pulse Flash Light Sintering for Application in Disposable Devices

Abstract

Inkjet-printed patterns were formed on a paper substrate using anti-oxidant copper nano-ink for application to disposable electronic devices. To prevent substrate damage, the pattern was flash light sintered under ambient conditions using the multi-pulse technique. Pure copper nanoparticles were coated with 1-octanethiol for oxidation resistance using the dry-coating method. Mixing these with 1-octanol solvent at a concentration of 30 wt% produced the copper nano-ink. Photo paper was used as the substrate. The contact angle between the photo paper and copper nano-ink was 37.2° and the optimal energy density for the multi-pulse flash light sintering technique was 15.6 J/cm2. Using this energy density, the optimal conditions were an on-time of 2 ms (duty cycle of 80%) for three pulses. The resistivity of the resulting pattern was 2.8 × 10−7 Ω∙m. After bending 500 times to a radius of curvature of 30 mm, the relative resistance (ΔR/R0) of the multi-pulse flash light-sintered pattern hardly changed compared to that of the unbent pattern, while the single-pulse-sintered pattern showed dramatic increase by 8-fold compared to the unbent pattern. Therefore, the multi-pulse light sintering technique is a promising approach to produce an inkjet-printed pattern that can be applied to disposable electronic devices.