Preliminary Study on the Self-Patterning and Self-Registration of Metal Electrodes by Exploiting Chemical and Optical Traits of an Organic Silver Compound in Conjunction with Polyaniline

The advent of printed electronics has shown the incessant requirement for the reduction of printed features less than tens of micrometers, where conventional printing technologies have not easily reached. To augment the resolution and registration capabilities of conventional printing technologies, surface energy patterning techniques have been explored. However, they require additional pre-patterning processes to differentiate regions with low or high surface energy and do not completely prevent electrical defects, which frequently occur when conducting ink coalesces across two adjacent electrodes. In addition, they do not provide an appropriate solution to precisely place the channel electrode between them. In this study, novel fabrication techniques for the self-patterning of two adjacent electrodes without the aid of surface energy patterning and the self-registration of the channel electrode between them have been demonstrated by exploiting the chemical and optical traits of an organic silver compound in conjunction with polyaniline. It is found that the combination of self-patterning and self-registration techniques could form two adjacent electrodes as narrow as 13.3 ± 1.5 µm and precisely place the channel electrode between them. The sheet resistance of resulting electrodes is found to be as low as 2.57 ± 0.06 Ω/□.