Study on the metal nanoparticles sintering for maskless fabrication of electrode pattern using digital micromirror device

Abstract

Metal thin film fabrication is studied with laser illumination with digital micromirror device (DMD). It is like "optical stamping" of silver (Ag) nanoparticle (NP) ink for the facile fabrication of 2D electrode pattern without any conventional lithographic means or scanning procedure. An arbitrary 2D pattern at the lateral size of 25 μm X 25 μm with 160 nm height is readily produced on a glass substrate by a short exposure of 532 nm Nd:YAG continuous wave laser. The resultant metal pattern exhibits low electrical resistivity of 10.8 uΩ o cm, and also shows a fine edge sharpness by the virtue of low thermal conductivity of Ag NP ink. Furthermore, 10 X 10 star-shaped micropattern array are fabricated through step-and-repeat scheme to ensure the potential of this process for the large-area metal pattern fabrication.