Influence of pre-sintering on the nanosecond pulsed laser ablation patterns of spin-coated silver nanoparticles

Abstract

Pulsed laser ablation can be used to repair misprinted patterns in printed electronics. The properties of the conductive ink varied with sintering temperature. This property variation significantly affected the ablation process. Thus, we compared the pulsed laser scanning ablation of dried Ag nanoparticle (NP) layers, which were sintered at 150 ℃, and sintered at 200 ℃ with quantitative evaluations. With higher thermal diffusion, the AgNP layer sintered at higher temperatures had more protruding Ag parts at the ablated line boundary. Ablation threshold fluence values of 264, 547, and 1370 mJ/cm2 were obtained for the Ag NP layers that were dried, sintered at 150 ℃, and sintered at 200 ℃ using D 2-law fittings, respectively. For the ablation process, the increase in the protruding Ag parts and the increase in the ablation threshold fluence would be problematic. For the sintered AgNP layers, D 2-law predicted the ablation threshold fluence quite well. The sintering temperature of the Ag NPs affects the ablation phenomenon by changing the surface morphology and physical properties of the pre-sintered layer.