Flexography Printing of Silver Based Conductive Inks on Packaging Substrates

Printing technologies for the production of flexible electronics have gained much interest due to its potential as a means to reduce the complexity and costs of present technology. High volume printing techniques like flexography are of great importance in order to produce rolls of flexible electronics printed directly on paper substrates. The proposed research will be focused on RFID components being in-line printed using flexography printing as the manufacturing platform. The properties of substrates and inks and printing process parameters are evaluated to study their effect on printed traces and RFID antenna. It was found in the study that properties of substrates like surface roughness, surface energy have an impact on the ink film thickness of the printed trace. The variation in ink film thickness and line width had a profound influence on sheet resistance. To achieve good printability and conductivity of printed traces variables like substrate roughness, surface energy, porosity, cell volume of anilox roll, printing speed, drying capabilities of press and ink flow characteristics have to be optimized and matched.