Direct fabrication of microelectrodes on a polymer substrate using selective ultrashort pulsed laser ablation of inkjet-printed Ag lines

Direct fabrication of microelectrodes on a polymer substrate using selective ultrashort pulsed laser ablation of inkjet-printed Ag lines" (2012). An inkjet-based ultrashort pulsed laser patterning on a polymer substrate is presented with high-laser scanning speeds. The effects of the laser processing parameters on the ablation characteristics were studied to accomplish damage-free laser ablation. Laser ablation characteristics depend on input energy, scanning speed, and number of scans. Final width of micro-electrodes can be flexibly controlled by multiple selective ablations. Well-defined, uniform microelectrodes without damaging their microstructure, and the underlying polymer substrate are demonstrated via a direct pattering process combining inkjet printing with ultrashort pulsed laser ablation. These microelectrodes exhibit little influence of thermal effect of laser ablation, resulting in little variation in their electrical performances. 1 Introduction Inkjet printing, a non-contact and direct printing method based on precise deposition of functional fluid materials, has attracted significant interest because of its feasibility for flexible and low-cost electronic devices [1–3]. However, the resolution of inkjet-printed features is limited by the droplet size and droplet spreading after depositing functional inks onto a substrate. Moreover, when printing on a hydrophobic surface to produce high-resolution features, various hydrodynamic instabilities could occur due to high-contact angle [4]. Consequently, the resolution of conventional inkjet printing has remained within several tens of micrometer [4, 5]. In recent years, to overcome this issue, inkjet printing has been combined with continuous laser sintering or low-power nanosecond pulsed laser ablation [6–9]. Electrohydrody-namic (EHD) jet printing, which uses electrical potential difference between two electrodes to form droplets, has been