The National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, reports that engineers have developed room-temperature-printed electronics, by which electronic devices can be manufactured at room temperature under ambient atmospheric conditions. Conventional printed electronics have mainly required high-temperature processes in order to sinter metal nanoparticle ink, which builds the electrodes. Since conventional metal nanoparticles have used insulating materials as ligands for dispersing the nanoparticles in the ink, the nanoparticles have needed to be sintered to obtain a conductive metal film.
However, in this research, the team succeeded in forming a metal film without post-coating sintering, by using conductive aromatic molecules as ligands of metal nanoparticles. The thin film obtained has achieved a resistivity of 9 × 10-6 Ω cm. In addition, by forming microscopic hydrophilic/hydrophobic patterns on the surface, the team patterned ambient conductive metal nanoparticles and organic semiconductors by a room-temperature process, and made organic thin-film transistors by forming all of the source and drain electrodes, organic semiconductors, and gate electrodes by room-temperature printing.
http://www.nims.go.jp/eng/news/press/2014/06/p201406163.html
