Investigation of curing silver conductive ink printed on polymer substrate using halogen lamp

Conductive silver ink has been used recently in numerous electronics applications. They normally comes in liquid and desires curing usually by heating to disclose its metallic constituents where solvent residues still require a few hours to vaporize completely. Hence, this paper discusses the investigation of using halogen lamp as curing substitute since it is capable of generating higher temperature by controlling its input power which potentially reduces curing time. The curing parameters were identified and their effect to conductivity, adherence and hardness level of the ink track were evaluated. It was found that halogen lamp is capable of producing high temperature by controlling its input power via dimmer and the temperature was observed to be directly proportional to input power. The time required to cure the ink was reduced when the temperature increased. The optimum temperature and time to cure silver conductive ink was at 130°C for 100 minutes, and the minimum resistance obtained was 1.1Ω with less damaged polymer substrate. It is proven that the halogen lamp could be used as a preference curing process to properly cure silver conductive ink on polymer substrate.