Photonic Sintering of Copper through the Controlled Reduction of Printed CuO Nanocrystals

The ability to control chemical reactions using ultrafast light exposure has the potential to dramatically advance materials and their processing toward device integration. In this study, we show how intense pulsed light (IPL) can be used to trigger and modulate the chemical transformations of print...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACS applied materials & interfaces 2015-11, Vol.7 (45), p.25473-25478
Main Authors: Paglia, Francesco, Vak, Doojin, van Embden, Joel, Chesman, Anthony S. R, Martucci, Alessandro, Jasieniak, Jacek J, Della Gaspera, Enrico
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The ability to control chemical reactions using ultrafast light exposure has the potential to dramatically advance materials and their processing toward device integration. In this study, we show how intense pulsed light (IPL) can be used to trigger and modulate the chemical transformations of printed copper oxide features into metallic copper. By varying the energy of the IPL, CuO films deposited from nanocrystal inks can be reduced to metallic Cu via a Cu2O intermediate using single light flashes of 2 ms duration. Moreover, the morphological transformation from isolated Cu nanoparticles to fully sintered Cu films can also be controlled by selecting the appropriate light intensity. The control over such transformations enables for the fabrication of sintered Cu electrodes that show excellent electrical and mechanical properties, good environmental stability, and applications in a variety of flexible devices.
ISSN:1944-8244
1944-8252
DOI:10.1021/acsami.5b08430