The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Application of inkjet printing technology to flexible batteries
Author:	Gu, Yuan
View Online:	njit-etd2016-095 (xxii, 165 pages ~ 8.4 MB pdf)
Department:	Committee for the Interdisciplinary Program in Materials Science and Engineering
Degree:	Doctor of Philosophy
Program:	Materials Science and Engineering
Document Type:	Dissertation
Advisory Committee:	Federici, John Francis (Committee chair) Iqbal, Zafar (Committee member) Farrow, Reginald (Committee member) Barat, Robert Benedict (Committee member) Ahn, Ken Keunhyuk (Committee member)
Date:	2016-08
Keywords:	Inkjet printing Particle free silver ink Constantin ink Copper ink Nickel ink Printable lithium ion batteries
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Printing technologies have been considered as alternative methods to fabricate thin films in recent years. More and more functional devices like resistors, sensors, antennas and even energy storage devices have been fabricated by printing technologies. As a typical digital printing technology, inkjet printing has much more advantages over the traditional mechanical printing technologies such as: low cost, computer controllable shape design and precise deposition. In this investigation, application of inkjet printing is used to fabricate conductive tracks and rechargeable lithium ion batteries. Particle free silver ink is developed to solve this problem. In this research, silver complex solution is printed on polymer substrate and sintered in air. It is shown that the polymer additive could control the particle shape and size of silver produced during thermal sintering. Also, the silver particle size could be reduced furtherly with a certain amount of chemical reductant additive. Moreover, the chemical reductant additive can lower the sintering temperature effectively. High resolution silver conductive tracks are made by particle free silver ink by inkjet printing. Constantan particle suspension ink is invented to make constantan sensors and resistors. A new chemical reducing sintering (CRS) is used to eliminate oxidation layers and sinter the constantan at low temperature. CRS is much safer and easier than other researches. This technology provides a general method to make metallic conductive tracks. Nickel and copper conductive tracks are also made by this method. The nickel conductive film is made by CRS and used as the current collectors for the lithium ion batteries, which is cheaper than the traditional gold current collectors and more conductive than conventional carbon serious current collectors. Flexible rechargeable lithium ion batteries are made by inkjet printing layer by layer. Inkjet printing is a potential method to fabricate thin film designable batteries.