[silver Conference] Application of Conductive Silver paste in flexible Printing Electronics

SMM10: at the 2020 China International Silver Industry chain Summit Forum and China Silver Market Application Symposium, Zhou Chunshan, a researcher at Suzhou Institute of Nano-Technology and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, delivered a keynote speech on the application of conductive silver paste in flexible printed electronics.

Overview of Printing Electronic Technology

Zhou Chunshan said that compared with traditional technology, printing electronic technology has many advantages: simple process, less working procedures, new products and new applications (traditional technology cannot be realized), increased material manufacturing (environmental protection, no pollution), low cost (simple process and high production efficiency), flexibility (suitable for all kinds of substrates) and large area (roll-to-roll printing production), and so on.

The key point of printing electronic technology is mainly nanometer new material + material treatment technology.

Flexible screen printing conductive silver paste

Zhou Chunshan said that nano-scale silver paste can reduce the sintering temperature to the temperature that ordinary plastic or even paper can tolerate, really opening the door for printed electronics to large-area, flexible, low-cost electronic systems.

The main characteristics of screen printing silver paste are as follows: high electrical conductivity, low treatment temperature, good adhesion, 5B with PET and paper materials, good printability, smooth edge of printing line, smooth surface, and a printing thickness of about 8m, the cost is relatively low.

It can be used in flexible thin film circuit to manufacture intelligent carpet, flexible keyboard circuit, medical flexible electrode circuit and so on.

It can also be applied to multi-layer printed flexible circuit, multi-layer printed flexible circuit technology to prepare four-layer Intel Miniboard circuit: (a) CAD design drawing, (b) bottom-to-top resistance test, (c) and (d) physical display.

Internet of things-there is also silver paste printing technology in the production of environmentally friendly RFID tags. The size of the electronic label market has exceeded 40 billion, which is used in logistics, clothing, anti-counterfeiting, unmanned retail, and has grown rapidly in recent years (EU de-plastic order, Japan 2025 Plan, Cainiao Network 100 billion Plan). Silver paste printing has technical advantages, printing on paper and film substrates to produce fragile labels, high yield and high profit.

Partial application

Application field of printing electronics

Zhou Chunshan said that printing electronics has a wide range of applications, mainly for conductive line printing: smart tag antennas, touch screens, circuit boards and so on. It is characterized by flexibility, simple process and environmental protection. At present, it has been basically realized and is in the stage of marketing. The main materials used are metals and conductive polymers.

At present, the challenges are: improving electrical conductivity, popularization and application, transparency and so on. In addition, it can also be used in the field of energy: solar cells and paper cells; printed field effect transistor (TFT): display driver, simple circuit control, storage of information; light emitting and display: organic light emitting devices (OLED/PLED).

Other applications such as printing silver paste in intelligent packaging, printing silver paste preparation of stretchable circuit, silver paste printing preparation of flexible LED display, can also be used in textile electronics and other industries.