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Highlights • Measuring the current-caused resistance changes of AJ printed Ag-NPs. • Four kinds of I-V curves obtained due to different initial R S of printed Ag lines. • Explained using electric sintering and electromigration because of Joule heating. • All of the fused printed Ag-NPs have similar R S , which may be a balanced state. Abstract The resistance variations of Aerosol-Jet printed silver lines in a current-voltage measurement with linear increased voltages are studied. There are four kinds of curves obtained due to the different initial average sheet resistances. The most typical device has both current leap and drop in the whole voltage sweep, and divides the current-voltage characteristics into three regions. The results, which show that Joule heating plays a key role, can be explained using electric sintering and electromigration failure. Characteristics of other devices were also explained subsequently to confirm the findings. All of the fused printed Ag-NPs have similar average sheet resistances, which may be a balanced state between electrical sintering and electromigration. This investigation opens up a better method for understanding the current carrying capacity of Aerosol-Jet printed conductive line with rough surface, narrow width, and high sheet resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed an aerosol-jet printing technique to realize an optical transmitter assembly of a microring modulator and a high-speed CMOS driver in which the bonding wires are replaced by aerosol-jet printed silver interconnects. First, the technology is characterized by printing coplanar waveguides (CPWs) test structures on glass and epoxy in order to fully investigate the electro-magnetic behavior of the aerosol-jet printed interconnects. The printed CPWs on glass and epoxy showed a low attenuation of 0.57 and 0.76 dB/mm at 50 GHz, respectively. Then, the aerosol-jet printed interconnects were benchmarked with conventional bonding wires while separately interconnecting the ring modulator without the CMOS driver. The measured reflection coefficient ($S_{11}$) of the aerosol-jet printed interconnects showed an increase in a resonance frequency of 20 GHz compared with Al bonding wires. Furthermore, the optical transmitter was successfully demonstrated at 60 Gb/s and the measured optical eye diagrams were clearly open even after 2 km of standard single-mode fiber. An extinction ratio of 4.63 dB was achieved while applying a drive voltage of 1 $\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pp}}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high level of automation is desirable to facilitate the lab-to-fab process transfer of the emerging perovskite-based solar technology. Here, an automated aerosol-jet printing technique is introduced for precisely controlling the thin-film perovskite growth in a planar heterojunction p-i-n solar cell device structure. The roles of some of the user defined parameters from a computer-aided design file are studied for the reproducible fabrication of pure CH3NH3PbI3 thin films under near ambient conditions. Preliminary power conversion efficiencies up to 15.4% are achieved when such films are incorporated in a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate-perovskite-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester type device format. It is further shown that the deposition of atomized materials in the form of a gaseous mist helps to form a highly uniform and PbI2 residue-free CH3NH3PbI3 film and offers advantages over the conventional two-step solution approach by avoiding the detrimental solid-liquid interface induced perovskite crystallization. Ultimately, by integrating full 3D motion control, the fabrication of perovskite layers directly on a 3D curved surface becomes possible. This work suggests that 3D automation with aerosol-jet printing, once fully optimized, could form a universal platform for the lab-to-fab process transfer of solution-based perovskite photovoltaics and steer development of new design strategies for numerous embedded structural power applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the development of a graphene/silver nanoparticle (Ag NP) ink and its deployment in an aerosol-jet additive manufacturing system in order to print highly conductive and flexible graphene/Ag patterns for flexible printed electronics. Printing with graphene/Ag NP ink produced a uniform microstructure and crack-free printed patterns. With a mean resistivity of 1.07 × 10 − 4 Ω cm, these graphene/Ag NP patterns have about 100 times less resistivity compared to graphene patterns and three times less resistivity than Ag NP patterns, made with the same printing system. With their low degree of resistivity and the same flexibility as the graphene printed patterns, resulted from the bending test, graphene/Ag aerosol-jet printed patterns may therefore be considered as an efficient candidate compared to either graphene or Ag NP printed patterns for flexible electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on printed flexible micro-hotplates operating at high temperature at lower power consμmption than ever reported using aerosol jet printing of fine metallic conductor features. Efficient heating (i.e., 40 mW at 325 °C) was produced by reducing the effective heating area and substrates thickness. Gold (Au) nanoparticles solution was used for printing micro-hotplates of two different sizes, i.e., 500 × 500 μm2 and 300 × 300 μm2, on 50 μm- and 13 μm-thick PI substrates, respectively. Comsol simulations were used to optimize the thermal design of micro-hotplates. Their power consμmption at 325 °C was of 54 mW for the large hotplate and of 40 mW for the smaller design. These results validate the simple manufacturing of high temperature and power efficient flexible micro-hotplates for applications such as in portable gas and chemical sensors, thermal metrology, etc.

Abstract: A high-purity, surfactant-free and stable SWCNT aqueous solution was prepared using a series of chemical and physical processes. The SWCNT solution has a very limited amount of carbonaceous impurities, if any, and a total metal content of well below 500ppb. It is stable for months without the addition of surfactant. Such SWCNT aqueous solution enables ink-jet printing of the entire fast, flexible SWCNT-based field-effect thin-film transistor (FE-TFT) at room temperature without the engagement of any traditional dry or wet chemical processes used for fabricating silicon-based transistors. High-speed SWCNT-based flexible FE-TFTs were printed using Aerosol Jet® printing technology. The printed flexible FE-TFTs were characterized to have a current ON–OFF ratio of greater than 130 with an operation frequency of greater than 5GHz. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]