"Invisible" silver tracks produced by combining hot-embossing and inkjet printing

Hot-embossed features are prepared by pushing customized and standard silicon calibration gratings, known as masters, into either polystyrene or polycarbonate, which are kept above their glass transition temperatures. droplet of a silver nanoparticle ink is then dispensed over one of these as-formed grooves using an inkjet printer. The ink fills the grooves as a consequence of capillary forces and is observed to form tracks with a uniform width. The tracks are described as invisible on account of having widths ranging from 5 to 15 µm. Wider tracks can be produced by dispensing more droplets and tracks with different morphologies can be produced by using different masters. Several as-prepared features are thermally treated to produce conductive silver tracks. The conductivity of the tracks is found to be 20% that of bulk silver.