Rapid Prototyping Journal

Fabrication of conductive paths on a fused deposition modeling substrate using inkjet deposition
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A List, Chad E Duty, Sudarsanam S Babu,
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Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A List, Chad E Duty, Sudarsanam S Babu, (2016) "Fabrication of conductive paths on a fused
deposition modeling substrate using inkjet deposition", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 22 Issue: 1, pp.77-86, https://
doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-05-2014-0070
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 Fabrication of conductive paths on a fused
deposition modeling substrate using inkjet
deposition
Wenchao Zhou
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Frederick A. List
Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, and
Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
and Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of integrating inkjet printed circuitry with fused deposition modeling (FDM)
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structures to produce embedded electronics and smart structures. Several of the challenges of combining these technologies are identified, and
potential solutions are developed.
Design/methodology/approach – An experimental approach is taken to investigate some of the relevant physical processes for integrating FDM
and inkjet deposition, including the printing, drying and sintering processes. Experimental data are collected to assist understanding of the problems,
and engineering solutions are proposed and implemented based on the gained understanding of the problems.
Findings – Three challenges have been identified, including the discontinuity of the printed lines resulting from the irregular surface of the FDM
substrate, the non-conductivity of the printed lines due to the particle segregation during the droplet drying process and the slow drying process
caused by the “skinning effect”. Two engineering solutions are developed for the discontinuity problem. The non-conductivity issue and the slow
drying process are attributed to the motion of the nanoparticles caused by the evaporation flow. The thermally activated drying process for the Cabot
ink suggests that the proposed solution is effective. Timescale analysis and experimental data show that the printing conditions do not have a clear
influence on the conductivity of the printed lines, and drying and sintering processes are more important.
Research limitations/implications – No quantitative model has yet been developed for simulating the printing, drying and sintering processes
associated with inkjet printing on FDM substrates. Quantitative models can be extremely valuable for improvement in understanding the problems,
optimizing the proposed solutions and coming up with better solutions.
Practical implications – The research findings in this work have great implications in implementing a hybrid FDM-inkjet deposition machine for
fabricating embedded electronics and smart structures. All the proposed engineering solutions for the identified problems can be potentially
integrated into one machine.
Social implications – The success of the integration of the FDM and inkjet deposition process will enable the design of compact electro-mechanical
structures to replace the large heavy electro-mechanical systems.
Originality/value – This work represents one of the first attempts for integrating inkjet deposition of silver nanoparticle inks with the FDM process
for making compact electro-mechanical structures. Three critical challenges are identified, and corresponding engineering solutions are proposed and
implemented based on analysis of the relevant physical processes, including the printing, drying and sintering processes, which has laid the
foundation for integrating the FDM and inkjet deposition processes.
Keywords Printing, Nanoparticles, Fused deposition modelling, Suspensions, Particle segregation, Skinning effect
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction has been searching for new methods for manufacturing

Ever since its invention in 1936 (Petherbridge et al., 2005),
lithography technology has been widely adopted in the
printed circuit board (PCB) industry for the fabrication of
conductive lines. In recent years, the electronics industry
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1355-2546.htm
Rapid Prototyping Journal
22/1 (2016) 77–86
Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1355-2546]
[DOI 10.1108/RPJ-05-2014-0070]
conductive lines to meet the requirements of smaller feature
size, less environmental impact, less weight and volume,
flexible electronics, embedded electronics, etc. Many new
© Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu,
2016. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under
Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy.
The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the
article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government
retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish
or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do
so, for United States Government purposes.
Received 28 May 2014
Revised 3 August 2014
Accepted 25 August 2014

77
 Fabrication of conductive paths
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu
techniques have been developed during the past decade,
such as:
● curved layer fused deposition modeling (CLFDM) (Diegel
et al., 2011);
● laser-based direct write (Piqué et al., 2006);
● laser micro-cladding electronic pastes (Xiaoyan et al.,
2006);
● screen printing (Er, 2010);
● offset lithography (Harrey et al., 1999);
● aerosol jet (Mette et al., 2007; Paulsen et al., 2012); and
● inkjet deposition (Szczech et al., 2002; Cheng et al., 2005;
Lee et al., 2005; Park et al., 2007; van Osch et al., 2008;
Woo et al., 2008).
CLFDM is limited by the conductivity. The cost of
laser-based technologies is often very high due to the
operation and maintenance of the lasers. Screen printing and
offset lithography requires a physical mask or printing plate,
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which significantly increases the design to production cycle.
Although aerosol jet can provide good resolution and
conductivity, the printing process is slow with a single nozzle,
and it is hard to scale due to the cost of the nozzles. Inkjet
deposition stands out for its low cost, high resolution,
scalability with multiple nozzles, wide choice of conductive
materials and substrates, no requirement of physical mask and
digital control of ejection and deposition. With different
droplet hardening mechanisms, various conductive inks have
been studied and successfully printed such as molten metal
(Gao and Sonin, 1994; Orme and Smith, 2000; Liu and
Orme, 2001), conductive polymers (Sirringhaus et al., 2000;
Chen et al., 2003), organometallic compounds (Cuk et al.,
2000; Rozenberg et al., 2002), metal precursors (Liu et al.,
2005) and metallic nanoparticle suspensions (Lee et al., 2005;
Park et al., 2007; van Osch et al., 2008). The operating
temperature for molten metal is usually high and thus limits
the choice of both inks and substrates and increases the cost of
manufacturing, while organometallic compounds or metal
precursor need additional heat treatments for them to become
metal, and the organic residues may reduce the conductivity.
Also, heat treatments may involve chemical reactions that
complicate the control of the manufacturing process. Metallic
nanoparticle suspension, however, is really promising and has
attracted lots of attention (Fuller et al., 2002; Perelaer et al.,
2006) because it can avoid the extreme processing conditions
required for standard lithographic fabrication, and
molten-metal-droplet deposition and the processing
temperature (less than 300°C) is compatible with various
substrates. Suspensions of silver, gold and copper
nanoparticles are common choices and have all been
successfully printed to form conductive lines (Park et al.,
2007; Perelaer et al., 2006; Bieri et al., 2005). With the cost of
gold nanoparticles being prohibitive and the easy oxidization
of copper nanoparticle, silver nanoparticle has been the most
popular choice among all the relevant studies. Printed
conductive lines with nanoparticle suspensions have been
extensively studied by different research groups (Szczech et al.,
2002, 2004; Fuller et al., 2002; Bieri et al., 2003, 2004;
Jaewon et al., 2004) with varying particle, particle size, solvent,
weight concentration, hardening condition, etc., and different
results on line width, line thickness and conductivity have
been obtained. Compared to PCBs that typically have a
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Rapid Prototyping Journal
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minimum trace width of approximately 25 ␮m and a trace
thickness of 35 ␮m (thickness for 1 ounce of copper per square
foot), inkjet can typically achieve smaller feature size with
printed line width and thickness down to approximately 1 ␮m
and approximately 100 nm, respectively. With silver
nanoparticle ink, the conductivity of the printed lines can
often achieve over 30 per cent of the bulk conductivity of silver
with proper post processing (Perelaer et al., 2010). Although
the previously achieved conductivity of the printed lines is still
not comparable to that of the copper used in PCB circuits, it
is sufficient for many electronics applications. Considering the
many benefits of printed electronics using inkjet, such as wider
choice of substrates, reduced weight and volume, less
environmental impact and applications in flexible and
stretchable electronics, inkjet shows a promising alternative to
the traditional PCB technology.
The most commonly used substrate material in the previous
studies has been glass because of its hydrophilic property. The
substrates with predefined patterns (patterned by different
surface energy so that some part is hydrophilic and some part
is hydrophobic) have also been investigated (Menard et al.,
2007; Wang et al., 2006). Low surface energy substrate has
also been used. Deposition of conductive tracks on untreated
polymeric substrates has been reported by van Osch et al.
(2008); however, the substrates used in most of the previous
studies are flat and smooth, with the main objective of
fabricating conductive circuits. Little has been reported on
integrating existing mechanical structures, which may include
textured or porous surfaces, with printed electronics. Based
on a bottom-up manufacturing philosophy, additive
manufacturing provides an opportunity for embedding
printed electronics into mechanical structures during the
building process, which may potentially enable the design of
compact smart structures that can sense and adapt to their
own state and the environment. A.J. Lopes et al. explored the
possibility of integrating stereolithography and direct print
technologies for 3D structural electronics fabrication (Lopes
et al., 2012). Aerosol jet has also been used to print conformal
electronics on 3D structures (Paulsen et al., 2012). Shemelya
et al. recently reported their successful attempt on 3D printed
capacitive sensors that have many potential sensing
applications, such as biomedical and environmental sensing
(Shemelya et al., 2013). FDM has become a prominent form
of additive manufacturing and has been used to build
mechanical structures for many commercial products.
Although conductive polymers can be used in FDM to build
conductive lines (Diegel et al., 2011), the resistance is
nonetheless too high for most of the applications. Espalin et al.
demonstrated a multi3D system that can produce 3D,
multimaterial and multifunctional devices based on a
combination of FDM process, direct printing technology and
a novel thermal embedding technology. To reduce the
complexity of the multi3D system, this paper explores the
possibility of direct integration of inkjet deposition with FDM
process for making electro-mechanical structures.
Three challenges of printing on a FDM substrate have been
identified and investigated separately in this paper. The first
challenge is the discontinuity of the printed lines caused by the
texture and the low surface energy of the FDM substrate
surface. Two surface treatments have been developed to
 Fabrication of conductive paths
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu
address this challenge – surface ironing that uses a weight with
a flat surface to “iron” the surface of an FDM substrate at an
elevated temperature and a novel “thermo-plow” technique
that uses a heated needle to “plow” a predefined pattern of
channels in the substrate to contain the deposited inks. The
second challenge is the difficulty of obtaining conductivity
from the printed lines due to both the particle segregation
during the droplet drying process and the low post-processing
temperature imposed by the FDM substrate. Two solutions
are proposed, including using a porous surface coating to
divert the evaporation flow to reduce the particle segregation
and using more viscous ink with larger nanoparticle size.
Experiments have been performed to study the effects of the
printing parameters and post-processing parameters on the
conductivity. Post-processing parameters have been found to
have a larger impact on the conductivity of the printed lines.
The third challenge is that the time required to dry the
deposited droplets is so long that it makes the fabrication
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inefficient due to crust formation on the top surface of the
droplet known as the “skinning effect”.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the issue of
continuity of the printed lines is discussed, and two
surface-treating techniques are developed to address this
issue. Section 3 presents the challenges of obtaining
conductivity from printed lines and the slow drying time and
discusses the underlying reasons with proposed solutions.
Conclusions are given in Section 4.
2. Continuity
The typical procedure of using inkjet deposition for fabricating
a conductive path on a substrate with metallic nanoparticle
suspension inks is as follows: the ink droplets are first
deposited at the desired locations on the substrate and then
dried to leave the metallic nanoparticles at the locations where
the droplets are deposited. A post-sintering process is usually
required to join the nanoparticles together to obtain high
conductivity from the printed lines. Therefore, the fabrication
process can be broken down into three sub-processes: the
printing process (i.e. the process of laying down droplets on
the substrate), the drying process and the sintering process. In
the printing process, droplets with a typical diameter of 1 to
100 ␮m are ejected from the nozzles with a speed of 1 to 20
m/s at a typical frequency of 1 to 100 kHz (Zhou, 2014). The
droplets impinge on the substrate and interact with each other
and then achieve equilibrium after the kinetic energy is
dissipated by viscosity (Zhou et al., 2013a, 2012). The typical
timescale of the process for printing conditions of interest is on
the order of micron seconds to milliseconds (Zhou et al.,
2013a, 2013b). The droplet drying process, however, typically
takes seconds to hundreds of seconds or even longer for the
droplet of metallic nanoparticle ink with similar size to dry at
temperatures ranging from room temperature to less than
200°C (Hu and Larson, 2002; Mezhericher et al., 2007),
which covers the normal range of printing conditions.
The sintering process typically starts around the time when the
liquid is evaporated, and the time for this to occur is on the
order of minutes to hours. We will next consider the three
sub-processes independently and examine their influence on
the final manufacturing results.
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To fabricate a conductive path on a substrate, the deposited
droplets must form a continuous well-defined line, which is
often not a problem for a smooth hydrophilic substrate as long
as the droplet spacing is small enough such that the deposited
droplets can touch each other. However, conductor continuity
is not a trivial problem for a substrate made with the FDM
process. As shown in Figure 1(a), the substrate has a textured
surface formed by the periodic extrusion of polymeric
filaments with low surface energy.
An additional concern for printing on an FDM substrate is
that the ink may infiltrate into the interconnected pores/gaps
between the filaments in the substrate causing shorting of the
printed circuit as reported in our previous work (Zhou et al.,
2014). In our experiments, a Fuji Dimatix Materials Printer
(DMP - 2,831) is used to carry out the printing experiments
on an FDM substrate made with ULTEM 9,085 using
aqueous ink loaded with silver nanoparticles from
NovaCentrix (Metalon JS-B25HV). The viscosity and the
surface tension of the ink are 8 cP and 0.03 N/m, respectively.
The droplet size is 10 pL (approximately 26 ␮m in diameter).
The contact angle of water on an ULTEM surface is 75°. The
irregular geometry of the textured surface tends to break the
printed line as shown in Figure 1(b) due to the complicated
droplet-surface interaction dynamics. There are many
different thermodynamically stable contact angles (i.e.
meta-stable states) on a non-ideal solid surface (Berg, 1993)
due to surface inhomogeneity, surface roughness and
impurities on the surface (Carey, 1992), which is still far from
being understood, despite extensive study for over a century
(Worthington, 1876).
To avoid dealing with the complicated contact line
dynamics on a textured surface to solve these problems, an
attractive alternative is to prepare the surface before printing.
Two different engineering techniques are proposed for surface
preparation. The first approach is to “iron” the surface using
a weight at an elevated temperature – similar to the ironing of
clothes as illustrated in Figure 2(a). In this process, the FDM
part is put in an oven at a temperature of 175-250°C with a
Figure 1 (a) A typical substrate made with FDM under microscope;
(b) discontinuous printed line on a FDM substrate
Figure 2 (a) Schematic of the surface ironing technique; (b) printed
line on a ULTEM surface of an FDM part “ironed” at 200°C for 20
minutes (the brightness in the center of the printed line is due to
reflection)
 Fabrication of conductive paths
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu
weight on top that exerts a pressure of 5 psi (34474 Pa) for 1
to 60 minutes. A Teflon® sheet is put in between of the FDM
part and the weight to avoid sticking. The ironing condition of
200°C for 20 minutes at 5 psi pressure produces a visually
smooth surface as shown in Figure 2(b). The surface
irregularities are eliminated, and the resulting printed line is
continuous and well contained on the surface.
“Surface ironing” is an interesting engineering technique to
prepare the textured surface of the FDM parts for printing
such that a continuous line can be printed on top of it. During
the “ironing” process, the material is heated to a temperature
such that the material flows under pressure to achieve a flat
surface. The process is similar to the injection molding process
except with an open boundary and a much slower “flow rate”
to avoid damaging the mechanical structure of the FDM part.
The “ironing condition” needs to be optimized to achieve a
balance between the quality of the surface, the speed of the
process and the damage of the existing structure.
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In contrast to the “surface ironing” technique that modifies
the surface globally, we have also developed a surface
preparation technique, referred to here as “thermo-plow”,
which only modifies the surface locally where the conductive
line is printed using a heated metal tip to “plow” a channel in
the substrate. An automated system has been developed to
perform the “thermo-plow” as shown in Figure 3(a). An
Antex G-3U soldering iron is used to heat the tip, and a
variable autotransformer is used to control the power (and
therefore the temperature) of the tip, which can range from room
temperature to 400°C. A copper tip with a diameter of 350 ␮m
is used to “plow” the substrate as shown in Figure 3(b). The
travel speed of the tip can be varied from 0 to 5 mm/s, and the
plowing depth (i.e. the depth that the tip is going into the
surface) can be varied with a precision of 25 ␮m. The tip size,
temperature, travel speed and plowing depth are important
parameters that affect the plowing results. The heated tip first
“melts” the materials and then plows them out to form a
channel. The combination of the parameters determines the
Figure 3 (a) Automated thermo-plow system; (b) copper tip for
plowing; (c) a thermo-plowed channel in an FDM ULTEM substrate
at a tip travel speed of 0.2 mm/s and plowing depth of 150 ␮m;
(d) microstructures on the bottom surface of a thermo-plowed
channel under 400⫻ microscope
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Rapid Prototyping Journal
Volume 22 · Number 1 · 2016 · 77–86
size and the smoothness of the channel. For example, fast
travel speed of the tip typically leads to a small channel size
because less material is melted and plowed away. If the tip
moves too fast such that the material is not heated up enough
and fractures mechanically, a rough surfaced channel may be
formed. At a tip travel speed of 0.2 mm/s, tip temperature of
400°C and plowing depth of 150 ␮m, we can obtain a smooth
channel as shown Figure 3(c). Figure 3(d) shows the
microstructure features on the bottom surface of the produced
channel at 400⫻ magnification. This microstructure is likely
the result of a phase/glass transition of the material (i.e. from
solid to liquid-like and back to solid again). The features have
a “bullet-like” geometry pointed to the travel direction of the
tip, and the size and geometry of the features depend on the
“plowing” parameters.
Although the surface of the channel is not perfectly
smooth, it serves well for the purpose of containing the ink
to form a continuous printed line as long as we deposit
enough ink into the channel. We can align the Dimatix
printer with the thermo-plowed channel and deposit ink
into the channel. Discontinuities of the printed line in the
channel may still result due to the roughness of the surface
of the channel as shown in Figure 4(a). However, if we
deposit enough ink into the channel with smaller droplet
spacing and multiple passes, we can almost guarantee a
continuous line, as the channel serves as a good container of
the deposited ink as shown in Figure 4(b), although the
deposited ink is still in liquid state due to the slow drying
process. Nonetheless, the thermo-plow technique can
effectively modify the surface with defined patterns locally
without damaging the structure of the entire part and
prepare the surface for printing conductive lines.
3. Conductivity and drying process
Physical continuity of a printed line using conductive ink is
required for it to be conductive. However, it does not guarantee
conductivity. With a continuous printed line, the intention was to
enable the silver nanoparticles to form a conductive line by
drying the liquid component of the ink. However, the
nanoparticles do not always stay together as intended during and
after the drying process. Figure 5 shows a dried printed line using
the NovaCentrix ink on a smooth ULTEM substrate. As we can
see, there are many cracks in the printed line due to particle
segregation, and no conductivity is measured. One of the reasons
is the well-known “coffee ring” effect (Deegan et al., 1997),
which has been extensively studied since its discovery around two
Figure 4 (a) A printed line in a thermo-plowed channel using
Dimatix printer; (b) deposited ink into a thermo-plowed channel
using Dimatix printer for multiple times
 Fabrication of conductive paths
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu
Figure 5 Printed line using NovaCentrix (Metalon JS-B25HV) ink
on a smooth ULTEM substrate
decades ago. The evaporation rate difference between the center
of the droplet and the edge of the droplet causes a replenish flow
from the center to the edge, which brings the nanoparticles to the
edge of the droplet and forms a ring. Contact line pinning has
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been identified as an essential condition for the coffee ring effect,
which often occurs due to surface contamination or self-pinning
by the accumulation of the nanoparticles on the contact line.
Marangoni flow has been used to suppress the “coffee ring”
effect by introducing surfactants (Hu and Larson, 2006).
Electro-wetting has been used to de-pin the contact line to
eliminate the coffee ring effect (Mampallil Augustine, 2011).
The timescale of the evaporation flow and the nanoparticle
motion has also been studied to reduce the coffee ring effect by
increasing the timescale of the particle movement (Shen et al.,
2010).
Another challenge is that the drying of the ink droplets
can be a very slow process, which increases manufacturing
time and cost. Figure 6 shows the comparison of the drying
process of a water droplet and that of a NovaCentrix ink
droplet on a ULTEM substrate at 60°C in an environment
of standard temperature and pressure and 50 per cent
relative humidity. The starting droplet volume is 1 ␮L in
both cases, and the recorded time span is 1,440 seconds
with equal time intervals between frames. What we
observed is that the water droplet dries at a nearly constant
rate all the way to nothing, while the ink droplet dries to
certain extent and then stops drying. It is because the
evaporation flow brings the nanoparticles to the top surface
of the droplet and forms a crust that significantly reduces
Figure 6 (a) Drying of a water droplet on a ULTEM substrate at
60°C in 1 atm and 50 per cent humidity; (b) drying of a
NovaCentrix ink droplet under the same condition
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Rapid Prototyping Journal
Volume 22 · Number 1 · 2016 · 77–86
the drying rate (Handscomb et al., 2009). The fluid
transport through the porous crust formed by the
nanoparticles can build up stress in the crust and lead to the
collapse of the crust at high evaporation rate (Erbil, 2012).
Given the challenges of the coffee ring effect and crust
formation, we have proposed two solutions to reduce the
particle segregation and speed up the drying process
simultaneously to print conductive lines. Considering that
both of these effects are caused by evaporation flow, one
solution is to divert the evaporation flow using a porous
substrate as shown in Figure 7(a). We have chosen a
commercial porous substrate, Novele™, produced by
NovaCentrix, which is a PET substrate coated on one side with
a porous oxide film. The porous substrate provides channels for
the fluid to flow through the substrate, which brings the
nanoparticles to the substrate and breaks the replenish flow to the
edge. Figure 7(b) shows a printed line on the porous substrate
using the NovaCentrix ink. The nanoparticles stick together after
drying and form a conductive line, the resistivity of which was
measured to be 4.75e-7 ⍀-m (approximately 30 times of the bulk
silver and copper resistivity) after post-sintering in a 125°C oven
for 20 minutes.
Since both the coffee ring effect and crust formation are due
to the motion of the nanoparticles caused by the flow in the
droplet, a second solution is to reduce the particle motion
caused by the flow to a minimum such that the nanoparticles
can stay together. We have chosen an alcohol-based
commercial ink CCI-300 from Cabot Corp with viscosity of
15 cP compared to the viscosity of 8 cP for the NovaCentrix
ink. The liquid component of the Cabot ink consists of
ethanol and ethylene glycol (Basiricò, 2012), which have a
surface tension of 21.97 and 47.3 mN/m, and a boiling point
of 78.37 and 197.3°C, respectively. The increase of the
viscosity plays an important role in reducing the motion of the
nanoparticles to the edge of the droplet for the Cabot ink. It
should be noted that the NovaCentrix ink is aqueous based,
while the Cabot ink is alcohol based, and the solution becomes
much more viscous as the alcohol evaporates first. Figure 8
Figure 7 (a) Illustration of an ink droplet sitting on a porous
substrate; (b) printed line using the NovaCentrix ink on a porous
substrate dried at room temperature; (c) printed line after sintered
in 125°C oven for 20 minutes
Figure 8 A printed line using the Cabot ink with larger
nanoparticle size and viscosity after dried
 Fabrication of conductive paths Rapid Prototyping Journal
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu Volume 22 · Number 1 · 2016 · 77–86

shows a printed line using the Cabot ink. Although there are Figure 10 Required drying time for different droplet size for Cabot
still some visible pores (the scattered black dots) in the printed ink at drying temperature of 200°C
line, the pore size is much smaller than that of the printed line
using the NovaCentrix ink as shown in Figure 5, and a
non-zero conductivity is measured after it is dried and
post-sintered in a 125°C oven for 20 minutes.
The reduction of nanoparticle motion can also alleviate the
crust formation and speed up the drying process. Experiments
were conducted to study the effects of the drying temperature
and droplet size on the drying speed for the Cabot ink. The
drying time required for a 1 ␮L droplet of Cabot ink is
recorded at different temperatures from 150°C to 200°C as
shown in Figure 9(a). The required drying time decreases
exponentially with the increase of the temperature. Putting the
same data on an Arrhenius plot, as shown in Figure 9(b),
suggests that the evaporation of the liquid is a thermally
activated process when the temperature is below the boiling
point of ethylene glycol. The required drying time does not
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decrease further when the drying temperature goes beyond the

boiling point of ethylene glycol. These results suggest that the
crust formation plays very little role in preventing the droplet
from drying for the Cabot ink. We have also tested the effects
of the droplet size on the drying time of the Cabot droplet at
200°C as shown in Figure 10. As the volume of the
evaporation is cubic of the droplet radius while the droplet
surface area is square of the droplet radius, the required
evaporation time is expected to be linearly proportional to the
droplet radius for pure water droplet. Figure 10 shows a linear
relationship between the droplet radius and the drying time for
the Cabot ink as well, which suggests that the presence of the
nanoparticles did not affect the drying process very much.
Both Figures 9 and 10 suggests that the effects of the crust
formation for the Cabot ink are negligible, and the reduction
of the nanoparticle motion can effectively reduce the crust
formation as well.
A further test is conducted with a different kind of ink from
NovaCentrix (Metalon HPS-021LV) that has a particle size of 2
␮m (compared to 60 nm for the NovaCentrix Metalon
JS-B25HV ink) and a viscosity of more than 1,000 cP. This ink
is too viscose to be printed with current commercial inkjet print
heads and is typically used for screen-printing. In this study, a
syringe needle was used for delivery of the ink. Figure 11 shows
several manually printed lines into thermo-plowed channels
using the NovaCentrix ink. As shown in the figure, the ink forms
a dense, shiny surface. The measured resistivity is 6.94e-8 ⍀-m
after it is dried and post-sintered in a 125°C oven for 20 minutes,
which is much lower than previously used ink. Many factors may
contribute to the better conductivity, such as less particle
segregation due to the larger particle size and viscosity, and much
higher loading of the silver nanoparticles (75 per cent versus
approximately 20 per cent). In addition, the shape of the particles
may also play an important role in keeping the particles together
as recently discussed in Yunker et al. (2011). The nanoparticle of
the NovaCentrix screen print ink is similar to a snowflake,
while the shape of the nanoparticles in the Cabot ink is more
spherical. All these factors can reduce the motion of the
nanoparticles such that the nanoparticles can stay closely
together, which is believed to be an important cause for the better
conductivity.
Given a couple of possible solutions for obtaining conductivity
from the continuous printed lines, the next step involves
investigating the influence of the printing, drying and sintering

Figure 9 (a) Required drying time for different drying temperature for Cabot ink droplet with a droplet size of 1 ␮L; (b) analyses of the data
in the form of Arrhenius plot

82
 Fabrication of conductive paths Rapid Prototyping Journal
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu Volume 22 · Number 1 · 2016 · 77–86

Figure 11 (a) A manually printed line using the screen print ink under microscope; (b) illustration of the manual printing process

conditions on the conductivity. As previously analyzed, the
drying and sintering process occurs on a much longer timescale
than the droplet interaction dynamics (i.e. drying only becomes
significant after the droplets have achieved equilibrium). We can
Downloaded by The University of The South Pacific At 15:49 01 May 2018 (PT)
with larger droplet spacing and narrower line with due to less
deposited silver nanoparticles. To investigate the conductivity,
the area of the cross-section of the printed lines is required.
Because the printed lines are typically not perfectly uniform,

therefore consider the influence of the printing conditions the cross-section area varies along the length of the line. To
separately from the drying and sintering conditions. calculate the resistivity of the printed lines, we take the average
Theoretically, if different printing conditions lead to the same area of three cross-sections along the printed line at points that
equilibrium state of droplets interaction, the printing conditions are visually widest, narrowest and medium. Then we can
should have a negligible impact on the final conductivity of the calculate the resistivity of the printed lines as plotted in Figure 14.
printed line. For pure fluids without nanoparticles, the As we can see, there is no clear trend of the relationship between
equilibrium state of droplet dynamics typically only depends on
the contact angle of the fluid on the substrate surface under ideal Figure 12 A typical double-hump cross-section of a printed line
conditions. For suspension fluids, however, the final nanoparticle with input line width of 100 ␮m
distribution (i.e. the morphology of the nanoparticles) in the fluid
before drying is dependent on the droplet interaction dynamics.
The nanoparticle distribution after the droplets achieve
equilibrium can be considered as the initial nanoparticle
distribution for the droplet drying process. If the droplet drying
process strongly modifies the nanoparticle distribution toward a
different equilibrium state (e.g. the ring pattern for the coffee ring
effect), the impact of the printing conditions may become
insignificant. In other words, the drying and sintering processes
play a more important role in determining the final conductivity
of the printed line because they have the opportunity to modify
whatever nanoparticle distribution is left from the printing
process as they occur on a longer timescale.
We have investigated the effects of droplet spacing and line
width on different substrates using the Cabot ink. Standard
2-cm long lines with input widths of 100 and 500 ␮m are
printed using the Dimatix printer with the Cabot ink on both
polycarbonate and ULTEM substrates. Figure 12 shows a
typical double-hump cross-section shape of a printed line with Figure 13 Resistance change with different droplet spacing
an input line width of 100 ␮m measured with a profilometer.
Two observations should be noted. One is that the actual line
width of the printed line is much larger than the input line
width. This is because only the droplet spacing is accounted
for in the input width and the droplet size is neglected. In
addition, droplets are often deposited in an overlapped fashion
(i.e. droplet spacing is smaller than droplet size), and the
diameter of wetted area is typically larger than the
droplet diameter. The second observation is the common
double-hump profile of the cross-section, which suggests that
the nanoparticles are still trying to move to the edge during the
drying process due to the coffee ring effect.
The resistance of the printed lines on different substrates
with different droplet spacing and line width is plotted in
Figure 13. The general trend is that the resistance increases

83
 Fabrication of conductive paths
Wenchao Zhou, Frederick A. List, Chad E. Duty and Sudarsanam S. Babu
Figure 14 Resistivity change with different droplet spacing (Bulk
resistivity of copper used in PCB is 1.68e-8 ⍀-m)
Downloaded by The University of The South Pacific At 15:49 01 May 2018 (PT)
the droplet spacing and the resistivity when the droplet spacing is
small enough such that the printed line is still continuous. When
the droplet spacing is around the droplet diameter
(approximately 26 ␮m), the resistivity starts to increase as the
droplet spacing increases, and some of the lines become
non-conductive. The line width does not have a clear impact on
the conductivity either, as indicated in the graph. This result
agrees with our previous analysis that the printing conditions may
not have a big impact on the final conductivity.
The sintering kinetics of the silver nanoparticles are
investigated separately in our previous work (Zhou et al.,
2014) to understand the influence of the sintering process on
the conductivity. It is found that the conductivity improves
with the increase of the sintering temperature for low
temperature sintering, and the conductivity improvement
stops at a critical temperature that is associated with the
boiling point of the liquid component of the ink because it is
a liquid phase-assisted sintering process. The results suggest
the drying and sintering processes do play a more important
role on determining the conductivity than the printing
process. Future efforts should be devoted to improving the
drying and sintering processes for better conductivity of the
printed lines.
4. Conclusions
This paper explores the possibility of integrating the FDM
process with inkjet deposition for making embedded
electronics and smart structures. Two challenges have been
identified for printing on an FDM substrate: producing a
printed line that is continuous and conductive. At a minimum,
a printed line must be physically continuous on an FDM
substrate to achieve functionality. Two different surface
treatment techniques were developed to address the texture
and the irregular geometry found on an FDM substrate,
including a global modification approach (“surface ironing”)
and a local modification approach (“thermo-plow”). Both
techniques proved effective for obtaining continuous lines
using inkjet deposition on an FDM substrate. The poor
conductivity of printed lines and the issue of slow drying were
also presented. It was found that both are caused by
nanoparticle motion driven by evaporation flow, which leads
84
Rapid Prototyping Journal
Volume 22 · Number 1 · 2016 · 77–86
to nanoparticle segregation (the “coffee ring” effect) and a
crust formation on the top surface of the droplet that prevents
the droplet from further drying. Two different solutions were
proposed. One involves using a porous substrate to divert the
evaporation flow through the substrate such that the
nanoparticles stay together and do not form crust. The other
approach was to increase the viscosity of the fluid and/or the
nanoparticle size to minimize the nanoparticle motion caused
by the evaporation flow. Both of these approaches have
successfully demonstrated conductive printed lines. The
influence of the printing conditions and the drying and
sintering conditions on the conductivity of the printed lines
were also discussed and experimentally investigated. Results
showed that the printing conditions do not have a clear
influence on the conductivity of the printed lines, and the
drying and sintering processes dominate conductivity. Further
efforts will focus on improving the drying and sintering
process.
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About the author
Wenchao Zhou is currently an Assistant Professor and holding
the 21st Century Professorship in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering at the University of Arkansas with a research focus
on additive manufacturing processes. Wenchao Zhou can be
contacted at: zhouw@uark.edu
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