A Process Study of Laser Patterning of Different Conductive Layers for Printed Electronics

Patterning of different conductive materials utilising nanosecond laser ablation was studied. The materials are namely printed silver (Ag) electrodes, laminated aluminium (Al) films, ITO thin films and PEDOT:PSS conductive polymer thin layer of different thicknesses. The authors investigated the feasibility of using 1064 nm wavelength, 20 nanosecond pulsed laser beam to strip off the conductive layers in order to electrically isolate the large area conductive materials or traces into appropriate segments or patterns. More importantly, the ablation process could be controlled to induce minimal interference to the underlying supporting materials while removing completely the conductive layer with very little residue. The ablated track widths the authors achieved in this project depends on the coating material and process parameters. Typically, the minimum line widths obtained using the laser patterning system were $60\ \mu \mathrm{m}$ for printed silver, $33\ \mu \mathrm{m}$ for Al, $28\ \mu \mathrm{m}$ for ITO layer and $32\ \mu \mathrm{m}$ for PEDOT:PSS, respectively.