INK-JET PRINTING OF NOBLE METAL NANO-COLLOIDS PREPARED BY POLYOL PROCESS

Abstract

Ink-jet printing is a non-contact technique of imaging computer data by means of jetting the ink from a small orifice to a specified position on a substrate. This technique has the advantage of being a fast, simple, low-cost and high-throughput technology. Thus, ink-jet printing technique has been successfully used in the last decade for many applications, such as OLED, transistor and integrated circuits, conducting polymer devices and biomolecular arrays. It is very important to optimize the physicochemical properties of the inks (viscosity, surface tension, adhesion to a substrate and etc.) in order to achieve optimal performance and reliability of the printing system and to obtain the best printed pattern. In this study, noble metal nanoparitcles such as Ag, Au and Pt were deposited on PET film by ink-jet printing technique using piezo-based EPSON desktop ink-jet printer (Stylus C67). Noble metal nano-colloids were prepared by polyol process in the presence of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone). The viscosities and surface tensions of the metallic inks were adjusted through the mixture of solvents and the surfactants. The patterns were designed by Power Point 2003. The amount of the inks deposited on the PET film was controlled by `luminosity` (L) value in the HSL (hue, saturation, luminosity) function. Surface morphology and roughness of the metal-printed film were investigated by SEM and AFM. Optical properties of the patterned films were observed by UV-vis spectra..