Metal Line Interconnects Produced by Means of Printable Copper Precursor Solutions

Patterned metal films are essential to a wide range of applications, from printed circuits and thin film displays in large area electronics, to electrodes in biomedical implants. Current fabrication techniques are usually photolithographic, and rely on either patterning a blanket metal film or patterning a planar substrate into which the metal is deposited, followed by polishing away excess metal (the "Damascene" process). However, photolithographic techniques are expensive and more suitable for relatively small substrates. Conventional printing techniques such as inkjet, flexographic, offset and screen printing for both printable metal films and emergent organic elements, have lower resolution, but offer advantages of flexibility, overall cost savings, scalability to large substrates or those with complex topologies. In addition, these methods have environmental benefits [1].