Analysis of Impact of Printing Parameters on Structural and Electrical Properties of DIW Printed Silver Conductive Traces for Printed Electronics Applications

Direct Ink Writing (DIW) is a rapidly growing 3D printing process. It is a type of additive manufacturing (AM) technology which plays a major role in the field of printed electronics. The key features of DIW are high precision, customizability, omission of mask or stencils, cost-effectiveness and scalability of materials. Despite numerous advantages of this technique, optimizing the extrusion process control still remains a challenge. The extrusion process is controlled by different printing parameters which needs to be optimized manually to achieve precise printed output. The impact of printing parameters like lengthwise deposition rate (LWDR), number of print passes and physical parameters like nozzle size over the printability of conductive traces is investigated. In this work, 12 batches of samples containing totally 60 conductive traces are printed by varying the printing parameters using Direct Ink Writer. Highly conductive silver ink is used to print these batches. The conductive traces are characterized to obtain their structural properties using optical microscopy and surface profilometry. The current-voltage characterization of the printed traces is carried out to determine the electrical behaviour of the printed batches along with their response under various bending conditions. Further, to validate this optimization analysis, a low-pass filter is fabricated using DIW technique. RF analysis of the printed device shows that the measured result agrees well with the simulated data.