International.
Iranian researchers at Amirkabir University of Technology used copper nanoparticles to produce a class of conductive ink that has application on printed circuit boards.
Amir Rezvani Moghadam, head of the project, said conductive inks are a new generation of inks with various applications, including solar cells, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), radio frequency identification (RFID) antennas and electronic circuits.
He added: "In traditional circuit board production, after copper deposit on the carbon fibers, the circuit plane is drawn on a copper plate using a letteringet or waterproof marker. With the letraset it will remain on the board and will be used as an electrical circuit."
The Iranian researcher further said that the traditional production of circuit boards uses too much copper and is very slow: "To solve this problem, a project on the production of conductive inks was executed as a new method to replace the traditional one."
"In this research, a kind of conductive ink was produced that will be applied on demand on a circuit board," he explained. "This method is much more cost-effective and takes much less time in the production of circuit boards."
Rezvani considered one problem with the use of conductive inks as well as the oxidation of the copper nanoparticles in them, adding that "to solve this problem, we used a special chemical method to preserve the copper nanoparticles against oxidation. This method greatly improved the oxidation resistance of copper and reduced oxygen on the surface of the nanoparticles to a minimum."
Data Source Provider: Amirkabir University of Technology.
