Aerosol Jet Materials

Aerosol Jet printers support a wide range of commercially-available materials including metal nanoparticle inks, diluted thick film pastes, thermosetting polymers, UV curable photopolymers and solvent-based polymers like polyimide and polyurethane. Various post treatment methods ranging from traditional oven sintering, to UV curing and even laser sintering enable these materials to become functional.

Conductor inks including silver, gold, platinum and copper have been developed to print at temperatures well below their respective melting temperatures. For example, several silver nanoparticle-based inks have shown strong adhesion (5B results via ASTM D3359) on a wide variety of substrates at 120C for one hour. Many of these metals can also be made conductive at room temperature using our proprietary laser sintering techniques, offered as an option on all systems. Ceramics, ruthenates and ferrite based inks can also be printed but require higher temperature firing to functionalize them.

Semiconductor, resistor, dielectric adhesives, and etch resist formulations also have been deposited with Aerosol Jet printers on a wide variety of substrates including polyester, polyimide, glass, C-Si, ceramic, FR4 and metal materials. Even biomaterials such as proteins and DNA have been deposited with Aerosol Jet printers without denaturing or loss of bio-activity. Bio-degradable polymers such as PLGA have also been deposited with Aerosol Jet printers.

Optomec customers on maintenance have access to a full array of ink starter recipes. These recipes include information regarding ink types, manufacturers, process set-ups, print parameters, expected print results including line width, thickness and resistivity, and any specific notes and tips regarding sintering times, substrate adhesion, and other pertinent information. For production customers, Optomec offers a variety of material optimization services including material selection for specific applications. Process development to meet specific production throughput requirements. Environmental testing to insure the material will meet specific performance objectives under varying environmental conditions. Full print process development and final recipe creation providing an out-of-box solution for customer specific manufacturing applications.