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Merck

Printed Electronic Materials

Printed electronic device held by a researcher.

Printed Electronics

Printed electronics involves the production of ultra-thin, lightweight, flexible, large-area electronics using printing technology. This novel production method directly integrates electronic components in the printing process. Examples include thin-film transistors (TFTs), organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs, sensors, flexible displays, solar cells, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, batteries, energy harvesters, and supercapacitors. Printed electronics is a rapidly growing research area, finding applications in the automotive industry, consumer electronics, smart buildings, smart packaging, healthcare, and the Internet of Things (IoTs).




Printable Inks

Our printable inks have specific rheological properties and can be divided into three main categories: conductors, semiconductors, and dielectric materials. Deposition techniques for patterning these colloidal ink solutions enable structures with desired thickness and resolution in inkjet printing, screen printing, gravure printing, slot-die printing, aerosol jet printing and others. Each technique requires the proper tuning of a set of different ink parameters, such as viscosity, surface tension, conductivity, and compatibility of the solvents with the underlying materials to enable a consistent printing process.

1. Conductive Inks

Our conductive inks are the main building block of all printed electronic devices, providing the fundamental device structure and integrated circuit interconnects. We offer metal nanoparticle and microparticle inks for various type of printing techniques:

  • Silver (Ag) inks with good physical properties and electrical conductivities
  • Gold (Au), platinum (Pt), copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni) inks preferred for electrochemical sensors, batteries and fuel cells
  • Flexible and biocompatible conducting polymer inks essential for bioelectronics
  • Well characterized carbon nanomaterial inks, with large surface area, low defect, high chemical stability, and mechanical flexible, attractive for electrode materials in printed batteries, supercapacitors, stretchable bioelectronics, and wearable sensors

2. Semiconductor Inks

Semiconductor inks are the core component of printed electronic devices and largely determine the performance of the final device. We offer a broad selection of both conventional organic and inorganic semiconductor inks, and next generation two-dimensional material inks:

  • Inorganic metal oxide ink, and organic semiconductor inks offer consistent properties such as mobility and bandgap, providing reliable performance for printed Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED), Field Effect Transistors (FET), and Organic Solar Cells (OSCs) devices
  • Emerging 2D nanomaterial inks offer direct bandgap, low defect, ease of fabrication, and the opportunity to fabricate novel, vertically-integrated next-generation electronic devices

3. Dielectric Inks

Dielectric inks and coatings play an important role in protecting and enhancing the operation of conductive materials, completing energy storage devices, and enabling electronic devices that operate under a bias voltage. Our dielectric inks are composed of organic polymers or ceramics in solvents and novel insulating 2D nanomaterials, such as hexagonal boron nitride, to provide temperature and electrochemical stability, which are important for solid state batteries, field effect transistors, and neuromorphic devices.

Substrates

Operating temperature range, roughness, mechanical property, transparency, and suitable wettability are important parameters to consider when selecting a substrate. A surface treatment process with proper chemicals typically helps to improve the wettability of the substrate with selected inks. We offer a range of conducting substrates coated with Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) or Fluorine-doped Tin Oxide (FTO), either on glass or flexible plastics, available in various substrate thicknesses and surface resistivities.

Fluorine-doped Tin Oxide (FTO) Glass

Our fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass (especially TEC GlassTM) offer:

  • Performance robustness due to minimized indium diffusion
  • Optimized electrical conductivity
  • Increased light transmittance, minimization of haze and reduced transmittance of electromagnetic radiation
  • Chemical, mechanical, and high-temperature stability
  • High resistance to physical abrasion, durable pyrolytic surface can be handled, cut, insulated, laminated, heat-strengthened and tempered using standard techniques
  • Unlimited shelf life, without oxidization or color change over time
  • Cost effectiveness



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