Atmospheric pressure glow discharge plasma sintering of solvent-free silver lines made by laser ablation dry aerosol printing

We describe a novel method of using atmospheric pressure glow discharge plasma for sintering printed conducting lines of silver. The solvent-free metal lines were prepared by laser ablation dry aerosol printing on Al2O3 ceramic substrate. The plasma was used in transferred-discharge mode where the silver line acts as the cathode of the discharge, thus ensuring that a substantial fraction of the plasma power is coupled to the silver line. It was observed that plasma power of 6.5 W led to clear densification of the line, and electrical resistivity of (7.6 1.5) & POUND; 10-8 V m.& COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of CIRP. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)