Rapid Laser Annealing of Silver Electrodes for Printing Organic Thin-Film Transistors on Plastic Substrates

The rapid sintering of printable metal nanoparticle inks is vital for the industrial mass production of electronic devices. In this paper, we report a rapid laser annealing method for printed Ag nanoparticle-based inks. We also fabricate Ag circuits and organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) on flexible plastic substrates through spontaneous patterning under deep ultraviolet (DUV) exposure. Compared to the conventional thermal annealing, laser annealing significantly reduces the processing time from 3600 to 10 s while preventing damage caused by excessive heat. The OTFT with laser-annealed Ag source/drain electrodes achieved good performance with saturated mobility of 1.68 cm
²
·V
^-1
·s
^-1
, high-reliability factor of 86.75%, and large saturated drain current resulting from the small channel resistance. This rapid laser annealing method is feasible for printing flexible electronics using metal nanoparticlebased inks in industrial mass production.