SBIR Phase II: Reactive Silver Inks for High Performance Printed Electronics

这个小型企业创新研究第二阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是通过高性能导电材料极大地增强印刷电子产品的能力。这将通过新型银墨和铜墨化学物质的开发和商业化来实现，这些化学物质用于从显示器边框和互连到高性能OLED电极，再到专门为高速打印和智能包装应用开发的墨水等多种设备应用中。这些发展的商业影响将是在多个消费电子设备平台上大量采用和使用印刷电子材料调色板。这最终将导致更高效的设备制造，同时提高性能。随着基础材料的改进，印刷电子市场正在迅速增长。这个第二阶段研究项目的目标是展示活性银墨化学的可扩展性、生产化标准的配方以及活性铜墨化学的发展。活性银墨的化学性质已开始受到客户的大力追捧。该计划计划通过新的银盐提纯来实现这种高性能油墨的可扩展性，从而通过工业相关工艺在大范围内实现高导电性。接下来，油墨将需要遵守特定的产品化标准。这包括从低粘度(10CPS)到高粘度(1000CPS或更高)的各种印刷工艺的化学修饰。此外，还将针对各种测试标准(如附着力、磨损)以及环境测试(如湿度和热循环)对化学进行修改。最后，进一步发展了反应性铜化学。可以在环境中进行热处理的铜墨在印刷电子市场上既是一个巨大的挑战，也是一个巨大的机遇。我们开发了基于各种低分子减重剂和短链表面活性剂的新型化学试剂，它们都可以在热循环下快速还原铜，同时保护表面免受氧化。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project will be to greatly enhance the capabilities of printed electronics via high performance conductive materials. This will be accomplished by the development and commercialization of novel silver and copper ink chemistries that are used in a number of device applications ranging from display bezels and interconnects, to high performance OLED electrodes, to ink specifically developed for high speed printing and smart packaging applications. The commercial impact of such developments will be the significant adoption and use of printed electronics material palettes across multiple consumer electronic device platforms. This will ultimately lead to more efficient device manufacture with a simultaneous improvement in performance. The printed electronics market is rapidly growing with progress hinging on fundamental material improvements.The objectives of this Phase II research project are to demonstrate scalability of reactive silver ink chemistries, formulations for productization standards, and development of reactive copper ink chemistries. The reactive silver ink chemistry has begun to receive significant traction with customers. This program plans to achieve scalability of this high performance ink by novel purification of silver salts to achieve a high conductivity at large scales with industrially relevant processes. Next the inks will need to adhere to specific productization standards. This includes modifications of the chemistry for various printing processes ranging from low viscosity (10 cPs) up to high viscosities for high-volume printing techniques (1000 cPs and higher). Also, modifications to the chemistry for various testing criteria such as adhesion, abrasion, and environmental tests such as humidity and heat cycling will be made. Finally, reactive copper chemistries will be further developed. Copper inks that can be processed thermally in the ambient environment represent both a significant challenge as well as a vast opportunity in the printed electronics market. We have developed novel chemistries based on various low molecular weight reducing agents and short-chain surfactants that both reduce the copper quickly under thermal cycling while protecting the surface from oxidation.