Abstract
Although photoreduction-based printing of metallic micropatterns makes these structures widely accessible, their use in functional devices is limited by the poor electrical and optical properties. These properties can be optimized by tuning the size and density of the nanoparticles in the structures. However, such optimization is slow and resource-intensive because the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we investigate the nanoparticle nucleation behavior in the superluminescent light projection technique. We demonstrate that optical dosage, which is widely used to specify and standardize processing conditions in printers, is a poor predictor of the nanoparticle size and density. Instead, the intensity of light and the duration of exposure have distinct effects even when their product (i.e., dosage) is identical. We further demonstrate that the empirically observed nucleation behavior can be qualitatively explained by the classical nucleation theory, but a more complex model is required to satisfactorily explain the onset of nucleation.
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Data sets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgments
Funding from the start-up grant at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology is gratefully acknowledged. Imaging was performed at the Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (ECCS-2025462).
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This work was funded by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Science Foundation (ECCS-2025462).
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J.C contributed toward conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, and writing—original draft. S.K.S contributed toward conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—review and editing, supervision, and funding acquisition.
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The co-authors (J.C. and S.K.S) are inventors on a patent application on SLP for which the intellectual property rights are assigned to Georgia Tech Research Corporation.
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Choi, J., Saha, S.K. Effect of light intensity on nanoparticle nucleation during printing of silver micropatterns via superluminescent light projection. MRS Advances (2024). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43580-024-00867-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/s43580-024-00867-4