Abstract:
Currently, the printing of functional materials is still becoming more significant.
Very promising is the area of printed conducting polymers, which are nowadays
already commercially available in a form of printing inks. To control the
production process and to ensure a good functionality of resulting printed devices,
the quality of printed layers must be further characterized and evaluated. In this
work, different methods of a physical study were applied to assess the properties
of screen-printed conductive layers on the base of PEDOT/PSS polymeric complex
(e.g. electrical measurements, profilometry, UV-VIS spectroscopy, optical and
scanning electron microscopy, photoacoustics and image analysis). The samples
were prepared using the screen-printable dispersion Clevios S V3 from the
producer Heraeus. The functional layers were deposited on several flexible
polymer foils via screen-printing. In order to obtain a set of samples varying in
thickness, the sieves with different mesh densities were used. In these prepared
layers various properties were studied (e.g. thickness, surface morphology,
resistance and specific resistivity, UV-VIS spectra and printing resolution). Finally, the influence of printing parameters on the resulting properties of the
layers and the suitability of the used evaluation methods are discussed.