We present the characterisation of inkjet printed conductive tracks and capacitors. The target application is the fabrication of inductors with built in capacitances for an application in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The resonance circuit consists of three components : restive parts R[Ω], inductive ones L[H] and capacitive ones C[F]. These form a resonance circuit with a resonance frequency adjustable to the target value of 400 MHz. The fabrication of the R and C components are discussed in this paper. Due to the special environment for which the circuit is aimed for, both the substrate and the coils must be free of ferromagnetic materials. To get more flexibility with regard to the spatial application of the coil, the system should be flexible so that it can for example form a tube. Therefore a variety of these components have been produced on a flexible Kapton substrate. Kapton not only has the advantage that it can be obtained as very thin foils (< 20 μm), but it is thermally stable (up to over 300°C). Colloidal silver ink was used as conductive material. To cure the silver ink temperatures below 300°C were needed. Aiming for a resonance frequency as high as 400 MHz resulted in fairly small and therefore easy producible values of C and L. R is only an unwanted component in the circuit, it should be as small as possible. The skin effect which describes the conductive layer thickness in a bulk conductor at high frequencies, reduces this conductive layer. Therefore only a few μm thick conductive domain is participating in the conduction. To achieve such a thickness by printing, only a few layers of ink are needed. The components have been measured and analysed with regard to linearity.
Dario Mager, Ute Löffelmann, Patrick J. Smith, Andreas Peter, Laura del Tin, Jan G. Korvink, "Inkjet Printing of Structures for MRI Coils" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP24), 2008, pp 891 - 894, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2008.24.1.art00110_2