Assisted sintering of silver nanoparticle inkjet inks on paper with active coatings

Inkjet-printed metal films are important within the emerging field of printed electronics. For large-scale manufacturing, low-cost flexible substrates and low temperature sintering is desired. Tailored coated substrates are interesting for roll-to-roll fabrication of printed electronics, since a suitable tailoring of the ink-substrate system may reduce, or remove, the need for explicit sintering. Here we utilize specially designed coated papers, containing chloride as an active sintering agent. The built-in sintering agent greatly assists low-temperature sintering of inkjet-printed AgNP films. Further, we examine the effect of variations in coating pore size and precoating type. Interestingly, we find that the sintering is substantially affected by these parameters.