Ink-jet printed high conductive silver traces on polymer substrates sintered at room temperature by a camera flash lamp

A simple and facile camera flash sintering method has been developed to sinter the ink-jet printed silver nanoparticle traces at room temperature to form conductive circuit on flexible polymer substrates. The electrical resistivity of silver traces sintered by two times of camera flash can be decreased to 8.4 μΩ cm, which is only about 1/3 that of the silver tracks thermally sintered at 150 °C for 80min. As camera flash sintering is fast, simple and cost-effective, it is promising to be widely used for nanoink-jet printed electronics. Furthermore, this method is expected be readily generalized to prepare other types of metal lines on various substrates such as glass and polymer owing to the room temperature process. The sintering mechanism is also investigated via in-situ recording temperature of the Ag nanoparticles based track during the flash sintering, which confirms the enhanced photothermal effect of nanostructures.