Classical electrically conductive pattern manufacturing method likes screen-printing and photolithography are complex and long time delivery. A method for forming metal wires by directly micro-dispensing pattern is provided, which includes the steps of self-assembly surface treatment, micro-dispensing catalyst pattern on the substrate, and forming metal wires by electroless plating. This methodology has been realized for an 8051 single chip circuit with metal lines less than 100 μm wide. The result has been verified by IPC 6013 standard for flexible substrate. After six thermal shock cycles from room temperature to 288°C and three runs of hot oil tests at 260°C, the circuit can still operate satisfactorily at 12 MHz clock frequency of LED text display device. In this study, an imposing vibration method during ink-jet printing of catalyst is also proposed to reduce the line width and improve blurring behavior. The variation of line width was improved from ±10% to ±3% in characteristic frequency operation.
Wanda W. W. Chiu, Ming-Huan Yang, Kevin Cheng, Chieh-Yi Huang, Chia-Hsien Cheng, Jane Chang, "Method For Forming Cu Metal Wires by Micro-dispensing Part II: Application and Testing" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP20), 2004, pp 261 - 264, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2004.20.1.art00059_1