Inkjet Printing and Low Temperature Sintering for Organic Electronic Applications

In recent years, inkjet printing is increasingly used as a flexible and digital patterning technique in order to deposit functional materials for the manufacturing of microelectronic applications, including radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, organic photovoltaics (OPV), organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and printed circuit boards. Due to its minimal waste generation and its efficient handling of expensive materials, inkjet printing represents a widely accepted alternative to conventional patterning methods, such as vapor deposition and photolithography. In terms of the deposition of conductive materials, inkjet printing of metal precursor inks as well as the sintering of these materials after printing is of great interest. In order to apply sintering conditions that are compatible with the thermo-sensitive polymer substrates, we present here a combination of alternative sintering methods, photonic and microwave flash sintering. Secondly, inkjet printing is used as a tool to deposit light emitting polymer films from solution. We present the investigation of ink properties as well as printing conditions of three polymers (red, blue and green emitting) in order to form homogeneous films with defined thicknesses for application in OLED devices.