Ink-jet printing of gold conductive tracks

An organic gold precursor was dissolved to form a jet printing ink and deposited using a modified IBM piezoelectric drop-on-demand printer. The substrates were glass slides, glazed tiles and alumina plates. On firing in air, at temperatures below 500 degreesC, the gold pattern was developed on the substrate by decomposition of the organometallic compound to form tracks that were electrically conducting. The best quality conducting tracks were obtained on glazed tile or glass. The problems that can attend this process have been identified and include spreading and blistering of thick films on pyrolysis and delamination on cooling caused partly by differential thermal contraction. The thickness of the gold was 1.4 mum per layer of deposition. (C) 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.