Patterning Silver Films

1. Laser patterning of silver nanowire thin films

A new process pioneered at Laserod.

The world’s first publication on this novel process is an article by Laserod’s Terry Pothoven appearing in the September 2012 issue of Information Display magazine. Silver nanowire is a new transparent conductive coating competitive with indium tin oxide, ITO. It exhibits significant performance and cost advantages over conventional wet etch of ITO. To download a copy of this article go here.

Laser lines etched in Silver NanoWire film on a PET substrate. The lines are 40 microns wide. Gigaohm isolation by laser patterning is routinely achieved in most films and especially ITO and silver nanowire.

2. Laser Patterning of Silver Paste Interconnect

We are seeing an increasing interest in silver paste for interconnect. Areas of purely conductive silver paste are adjacent to areas of transparent and conductive ITO or silver nanowire.

A pattern of laser lines on silver paste on a glass substrate. Width of the etched laser lines is 30 microns. This is a representative, non-proprietary pattern.

Magnified image of 30um laser lines on silver paste.