The printed electronics market is in a transition as developments in new materials drive applications from R&D toward production. Functionally conductive inks and coatings are being manufactured with nanoparticles for use with low-temperature, low cost substrates such as paper, PET and polyethylene films. Silver, gold and more recently, lower-cost copper nanoparticle inks are available on the market for applications in inkjets and screen printers. Printing on flexible substrates such as printed circuit boards, at room temperature, is becoming a reality. The challenge facing producers of evolving nanoparticle inks is how to sinter or anneal these inks at substrate temperatures typically below 160 C°. Pulsed light technology from Xenon offers the solution! The high peak pulse, delivered in milliseconds, quickly heats the inks and not the substrate. The high energy removes the solvent and leaves just the metal flakes which are sintered or annealed. The substrate is not affected by the pulsed light. One advantage of the speed by which the sintering occurs is that copper ink is cured so quickly it does not develop an oxide layer that can typically form on the surface, thus improving conductivity. The flexibility of Xenon’s RC-800 series offers the ability to customize a system to match the curing needs of a range of nanoparticle inks. Looking for help? Just send your material samples to our lab in Wilmington for evaluation and our equipment recommendation.

Here’s the good news: Investments by many companies large and small, as well as countless universities, are focused on breakthrough materials research to meet the increasing needs of flexible substrates to achieve roll-to-roll, high speed production at lower cost. Applications range from solar cells, OLED displays, printed circuit boards (PCB) and IC packaging.

Here’s the hitch: As these flexible new materials become thinner, they are highly heat sensitive. For devices that are sensitive to heat and water vapor, thermal curing is unacceptable. Scaling traditional mercury UV systems results in higher heat.

Here’s the GREAT news: Xenon’s modular pulsed light systems are flexible, adaptable and they offer low heat curing. The key to how Xenon’s systems achieve very low heat curing is in the short (under 1 millisecond), high energy (typically 12 megawatts peak) pulsed UV light. For system flexibility, we’ve developed a modular system design with compact power supply and controller that can be located at a distance from the pulsed light lamp. This adaptability lets us help you customize a system to solve difficult application problems. Where researchers need to achieve the optimal balance between energy, thermal management, short cure times and optical footprint, Xenon has the answers.

Scientists performing research on stem cell lines are working to develop new materials that support higher cell densities and can be scaled from bench-top to high throughput systems. These new surfaces replace biological surface coatings currently being used. Helping in the development of new surfaces is the application of high energy pulsed light to prepare surfaces for cell types that have been difficult-to-impossible to grow using traditional surface preparation methods.

As we move ahead in our development of new curing systems for applications requiring harder, more scratch resistant surfaces, such as coatings used for eyeglass lenses, Blu-ray disc™ top coat and protective coatings for solar cells, we learn more about how key the rapid delivery is of pulsed light energy. UV photoinitiators not only have the ability to absorb UV light energy very quickly, but do so with a resulting harder cure. How much harder? Comparison tests between our systems providing pulsed light at 10 pulses/second, compared with our systems delivering the same total energy at a faster 25 pulses/second yielded a final hardness improvement of over 2 ½ times. That is an impressive hardness improvement of 250% with no increase in total delivered energy to the coating material. An added bonus – exposure time drops by 60%. This helps increase throughput for continuous production systems! Need to know more – just contact our sales folks and they can tell you about the systems that deliver this type of performance.

Saad Ahmed was responsible for all aspects of design at Dalsa Inc., a global leader in high performance imaging and semiconductors, and he earned a PhD in electrical engineering from The University of Liverpool (UK).

“I feel excited to work with a highly competent and motivated team,” Dr. Ahmed commented. “My key focus will be the customer and to see ways of building on the great partnerships that Xenon has established.”

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When Surface Hardness is Needed - We Can Deliver.