Printed Electronics - Aerosol Jet Printing

For printing electronics, Cicor uses the Aerosol Jet Printing technology.

All used materials are RoHS compliant.

Depending on the ink used and the sintering temperature, conductivity can go up to appiximately 40% of bulk material.

Not with the known inks, they contain solvents that are harmful when getting in contact with human tissue.

We have several wide feature and small feature print heads available, overall number is 6-8.

Using aerosol jet printing we can deposit coatings of different organic materials. Other methods can be used as well, e.g. spray coating.

We control it mainly by the gas flows and printing speed. Regular measurements of mass output are performed.

We are doing a standardized cross cut test followed by a tape adhesion test. The adhesion level is then evaluated.

The process is fully scalable and equipment with several print heads has been used.

The alignment accuracy is typically in the range of a few microns. There is a dependency on the shape of the substrate.

The ink properties can be controlled by adding solvent, by temperature, and atomization power. We are doing ink health checks by measuring the mass output.

A “primer” printing with polymer inks can be done to smoothen the substrate surface. This step can also be done using other methods like spray coating.

The maximum temperature is mainly defined by the max temperature the substrate materials can withstand.

Typical printing speeds are between 5 and 20mm/sec.

Silver, Gold, platinum, palladium, copper and nickel.

The viscosity can be between 5 and 1000 cP.

On different plastic types, ceramics, paper, wood, metal, etc.

On hydrophobic materials like PTFE.

Edges need to have a radius of min 0.3mm to avoid turbulences and uncontrolled ink deposition.

Angles have to be 90 degrees or bigger