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Conductive network structure formed by laser sintering of silver nanoparticles

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Abstract

The sintering of a silver (Ag) nanoparticle film by laser beam irradiation was studied using a CW DPSS laser. The laser sintering of the Ag nanoparticle thin film gave a transparent conductive film with a thickness of ca. 10 nm, whereas a thin film sintered by conventional heat treatment using an electronic furnace was an insulator because of the formation of isolated silver grains during the slow heating process. The laser sintering of the Ag nanoparticle thin film gave a unique conductive network structure due to the rapid heating and quenching process caused by laser beam scanning. The influences of the laser sintering conditions such as laser scan speed on the conductivity and the transparency were studied. With the increase of scan speed from 0.50 to 5.00 mm/s, the surface resistivity remarkably decreased from 4.45 × 108 to 6.30 Ω/sq. The addition of copper (Cu) nanoparticles to silver thin film was also studied to improve the homogeneity of the film and the conductivity due to the interaction between the oxidized surface of Cu nanoparticle and a glass substrate. By adding 5 wt% Cu nanoparticles to the Ag thin film, the surface resistivity improved to 2.40 Ω/sq.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant Number 24360301 and also by MEXT KAKENHI under Grant Number 24102004. The authors thank Mr. Masao Ishii for the assistance in the FE-SEM measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan

    Gang Qin & Akira Watanabe

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo, 454001, China

    Gang Qin

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  1. Gang Qin
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  2. Akira Watanabe
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Correspondence to Akira Watanabe.

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Qin, G., Watanabe, A. Conductive network structure formed by laser sintering of silver nanoparticles. J Nanopart Res 16, 2684 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-014-2684-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-014-2684-8

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