29 February 2012

All About Conductive Inks

By Christopher Eyres


Conductive ink is a special kind of ink that conducts electricity. The ink is generally made of conductive materials such as powdered or flaked silver and carbon-like materials. They are denser than other inks and the polymer thick film systems allow the circuits to be drawn or published on a selection of substrate materials like polyester to paper.

Silver inks contain particles of silver flake, that aren't more than twenty nanometers in size. The flakes are sometimes extraordinarily dense and the conductive inks that are used for screen printing are almost commonly solvent inks. Carbon inks are often less than one micron in size, thereby giving it a bigger surface area by solid volume compared with other ink fillers.

The manpower to work with conductive inks are going to be specially trained in order to understand the composition, storage, handling, conductivity and resistivity of the various inks available.

Most of the conductive inks are bound with a thermoplastic polymer binder that holds the conductive particles together. Some thermoplastic binders are softened at elevated temperatures and the conductive particles are introduced to be utilized as ink. Some other thermoplastic binders can be melted in a solvent that makes them flow, then dries up to leave the binder and the conductive particles in their place. The thermoset is a polymer in the liquid form that acts like an epoxy for the ink binder. It causes a chemical reaction that crosslinks the molecules of both materials until a dense solid structure is left. Though the thermoset can't melt in any solvent, they can absorb dissolving solutions.

The composition of the conductive ink can be customised using advanced resin processes, using mixture of adhesion, flex and thermal properties and compatibility with the substrates used. This will enable the conductive inks to be utilized for a variety of purposes such as screen print, gravure, photo-imaging, pad printing and other processing methods.

Conductive inks are employed as curing inks appropriate for front-side grid and bus-bar conductors for thin film technologies. The conductive ink is generally employed in the Radio-Frequency identification and cellphone circuits. The inks act to form the pathways of standard surface switches to the most complex electronics employed in hi-tech industries. Some inks are compatible to be utilized for printing electroluminescent displays that are, in turn, used for signage, backlights, automotive lighting and also decorative lighting. Revealed antennae utilising the silver inks has an extensive usage, as in transit tickets, e-passports, automotive antennae on the rear window, etc . Printed batteries are made of conductive inks of carbon, silver and other custom compositions. Other important applications of the conductive ink are touch screens, broadcast heaters, thermal targets, antistatic packaging, medical devices and many more.

Studies are being conducted to find technologies inside conductive inks that can help in bringing the curing or drying time down, lower the temperatures and also cut costs by finding the proper replacing of the valuable metal silver. Techniques for bettering the producing method to high speed printing processes is also being sought.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...