Effect of Silver Filler Morphology on the Conductivity of Screen-Printable Silver Inks

초록

Conductive inks are essential for developing flexible and wearable electronic devices, where printability and electrical performance must be finely balanced. However, achieving high conductivity while minimizing costly silver filler content remains a key challenge in ink formulation. In this work, we demonstrate that a simple ball-milling process transforms spherical silver particles into platelet-shaped fillers, dramatically enhancing conductivity at equivalent filler loading. The resulting inks show a reduction in sheet resistance from ~180 Ω/□ to ~ 0.57 Ω/□ at 70 wt% filler content, with improved performance attributed to surface-to-surface contact between platelets. Moreover, we show that filler content influences not only electrical conductivity but also ink viscosity, with the 53.8 wt% formulation achieving a practical balance between conductivity, processability, and cost. This morphology- and composition-controlled ink design offers a scalable strategy for manufacturing high-performance, cost-effective conductive inks suitable for next-generation printed electronics.

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