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Copper pastes using bimodal particles for flexible printed electronics

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Abstract

Copper paste is poised to replace silver paste in some applications because of its low cost. However, a high temperature (>900 °C) is required for sintering a film printed with a copper micro-flakes paste, while film cracking might occur if the paste is made up of copper nanoparticles. In this study, these problems are ameliorated by using a mixture of copper micro-flakes and nanoparticles in the paste. The film printed with the paste containing bimodal particles could be sintered at a much lower temperature, and the presence of flakes could suppress the formation of cracks during sintering. The optimal formulation of the screen-print paste was determined to be 20 wt% copper flakes and 80 wt% copper nanoparticles in this study, leading to a volume resistivity of 28 µΩ cm for a film sintered with intense-pulsed light.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Limited, Hong Kong, for their assistance to this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong

    Sze Kee Tam, Ka Yip Fung & Ka Ming Ng

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  1. Sze Kee Tam
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  2. Ka Yip Fung
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Correspondence to Ka Ming Ng.

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Tam, S.K., Fung, K.Y. & Ng, K.M. Copper pastes using bimodal particles for flexible printed electronics. J Mater Sci 51, 1914–1922 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9498-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9498-7

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