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

这个小企业创新研究第二阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将通过高性能导电材料大大提高印刷电子产品的能力。 这将通过新型银和铜油墨化学品的开发和商业化来实现，这些化学品用于许多设备应用，从显示器边框和互连到高性能OLED电极，再到专门为高速印刷和智能包装应用开发的油墨。 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。 这将最终导致更有效的设备制造，同时提高性能。 印刷电子产品市场正在快速增长，其进展取决于基本材料的改进。该第二阶段研究项目的目标是展示活性银油墨化学品的可扩展性、产品化标准的配方以及活性铜油墨化学品的开发。 反应性银油墨化学已开始受到客户的显著关注。 该计划计划通过银盐的新型纯化来实现这种高性能墨水的可扩展性，以在工业相关工艺的大规模下实现高电导率。 接下来，油墨将需要遵守特定的产品化标准。 这包括对各种印刷工艺的化学性质进行修改，范围从低粘度（10 cPs）到高粘度（1000 cPs及更高）。 此外，还将针对各种测试标准（如粘附力、磨损和环境测试（如湿度和热循环））对化学进行修改。 最后，将进一步开发活性铜化学。 可在周围环境中热处理的铜油墨代表着印刷电子市场的重大挑战和巨大机遇。 我们开发了基于各种低分子量还原剂和短链表面活性剂的新型化学品，这些还原剂和表面活性剂都能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.