High throughput inkless printing using laser produced dry aerosols

Additive and solvent-free direct printing is critical for many applications, including smart electronics, solar cells, healthcare, and electrochemical energy storage. Although a few green techniques for direct patterning of inorganic functional materials have been developed, they operate at small scale and require long processing times, restricting their effective translation from laboratory to market. Here we report a fast, liquid-free, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly aerosol-based printing method for fabricating linear or planar structures at microscale dimensions. In situ and on-demand generation of dry aerosol via pulsed laser ablation, coupled with real-time aerodynamical focusing using a co-flowing sheath gas, allows the deposition of a wide variety of materials on various substrates at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Using silver as a test material, we systematically characterized the laser-generated aerosol deposits in terms of microstructural morphology, sintering activity, mass yield, density, and electrical performance, to show the relationship between process variability and underlying mechanisms. The capacity of high-throughput printing of silver deposits, with thickness up to 160 µm, in a single pass was demonstrated. This rapid, efficient, and inkless printing process opens new and exciting opportunities for future applications that require easy-to-integrate components in printed electronic devices.