Electroninks unveils suite of metal complex conductive ink
Customer-centric inks accelerate hardware innovations, said Electroninks, as it unveiled a suite of proprietary metal organic decomposition (MOD) conductive metal inks. The ink solutions eliminate the need for traditional deposition methods, reduce costs and are eco-friendly, said the company.
Based on Electroninks’ metal-complex chemistries, these materials are referred to as “particle-free” inks, due to their translucent nature. They are an alternative to conventional nanoparticle inks and pastes for metallisation in printed electronics. The ink provides product designers and manufacturers of virtually any hardware device a new palette of electronic materials for printing high-performance circuitry and accelerating time to market for new innovations, said the company. At the same time, the company said it can reduce costs and increase sustainability in the metallisation process.
“Traditional conductive inks and metal deposition methods have been around for decades, but are slow, problematic, expensive, and not at all environmentally friendly,” said Brett Walker, co-founder and CEO of Electroninks. “Our metal complex particle-free inks . . . . set a new standard for conductive inks in 21st century electronics manufacturing.”
Electroninks currently offers an array of silver, gold and platinum-based inks in the MOD platform, as well as nickel and copper in the prototyping phase. The company offers CircuitShield low maintenance ink products for EMI shielding and back-end semiconductor metallisation. It eliminates spray nozzle clogging, residue in silver film, and provides high shielding effectiveness. It is used for five-sided SiP shielding with aspect ratio from the top to the side wall close to one. Other use-cases involve wafer metallisation and conformal via coating.
A second product lines is CircuitWrap, this is composed of ink products used as bezel/wrap electrodes in touch panel displays, and micro/miniLED panels. Electroinks said they have “exceptional electrical, mechanical, and reliability performance in a less than two micron thickness film, for customers in display and touch panel. It can be patterned down to less than three micron line/space. The material is suitable for bezel electrodes in touch panel (and foldable touch panels), wrap electrodes in micro/miniLED panels and metal mesh films for flexible display technologies. Electroninks’ particle-free ink technology allows for a seamless deposition onto patterned substrates that will then be metallised to create a fine metal mesh for thin and flexible of displays. Panel-makers and OEMs in OLED, micro/miniLED can produce foldable touch-screens for displays, mobile devices and AR/VR lenses.
The third product series is CircuitSeed. These are thin, dense films used as 3D/finely patterned seed layers for subsequent metallisation by plating. According to Electroninks it reduces the 20+ step process to just a few steps and uses at least 40 times less water and substantially less energy. CircuitSeed supports multiple chemistries that can be printed via a variety of techniques as dense, finely patterned seed layers on surfaces ranging from rigid to flexible plastics, and even 3D.
