The self-induced electric-field-driven jet printing for fabricating ultrafine silver grid transparent electrode

To overcome the mandatory requirement of nozzle conductivity in the conventional electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jet printing, this paper proposed a self-induced electric-field-driven jet printing for fabricating ultrafine silver grids. In this method, only a copper foil is mounted on an insulating glass nozzle to serve as an extraction electrode for producing an electric field with substrate by electrostatic induction, which not only saves the fabrication cost of conduction treatment, but also reduces the amount of residual charges to improve printing stability. The simulation and experimental results have confirmed printing ability and optimised the printing parameters. Based on the optimised parameters and high viscosity silver paste, silver grids with line width (300 nm-7 mu m) and aspect-ratio (0.39-1) have been printed successfully. Finally, silver grids with line width of 3.5 mu m and a pitch of 90 mu m were successfully fabricated with excellent performance of transmittance (T = 92%) and sheet resistance (R-s = 1.3429 omega sq(-1)).

Automated summary

A self-induced electric-field-driven jet printing method was proposed for fabricating ultrafine silver grids, which saves fabrication cost and improves printing stability. Optimized parameters and high viscosity silver paste allowed successful printing of silver grids with line width ranging from 300 nm to 7 μm and aspect-ratio from 0.39 to 1.