Direct Fabrication of Highly Conductive Micro Silver Tracks Using Electrohydrodynamic Jet Printing for Sub-20 µM Micro-Manufacturing

This paper presents a direct fabrication method of highly conductive silver tracks with sub-20 μm microstructures on glass substrate by using electrohydrodynamic jet printing (EHDJP) with alternative current (AC) voltage. Traditional ink jet printing fabrication approaches are limited in the achievable resolution. EHDJP has been used in directly printing by generating a fine jet through a large electrical potential between nozzle and substrate. When charge accumulates on the ink meniscus at the nozzle, a fine jet down to nano scale can be generated. In the paper, we successfully applied EHDJP for fabrication of highly conductive silver tracks using AC voltage. It was the first time that sub-20 μm silver tracks were demonstrated and printed with resistivity about 3.16 times than bulk silver. The variables of fabrication process were investigated to achieve reliable jet printing of conductive silver tracks. The topography of printed tracks was characterized and verified in the study. The presented technique can be used for micro-manufacturing of three-dimensional microstructures and biomedical device fabrications.