Over the last decades, printed electronics has gained importance as a cost-effective alternative to silicon-based electronics. Capitalizing on the conventional techniques from the graphics industry has allowed printing all the required materials (including metals, polymers, dielectrics, or ceramics) necessary to produce functional components and devices. Among them, direct-write techniques such as inkjet printing are particularly interesting since they allow printing inks on-demand directly from a digital file without the need for expensive pre-fabricated stencils or masks. However, high-viscosity inks, or those containing large particles in suspension, result in clogging of the nozzle output, which limits the range of printable materials. Alternatively, laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT), a more recently developed digital printing technique, has barely any of these constraints.

LIFT is a digital method for printing almost all kinds of inks regardless of their rheology. In LIFT, a thin layer of ink containing the desired functional material is extended on a donor substrate, which is placed facing the receiver substrate at a certain gap. Then, a laser pulse focused on the donor film induces a cavitation bubble that propels the material forward, which results in the material finally being deposited on the receiver substrate. The lack of nozzle in LIFT allows printing inks featuring low and high viscosities (0.001-100 Pa·s) and particles up to several tens of micrometers.

In this presentation, we explore the versatility of LIFT as a printing technique for printed electronics applications. Special attention is devoted to the transfer of conductive pads to be used as interconnects, the fundamental component in electronic devices. In particular, to demonstrate the potential of LIFT, we put into perspective three different cases. First, the LIFT of silver nanowire inks for producing transparent electrodes. Second, the LIFT of high solid content silver screen printing ink to be used as low-resistivity interconnects on regular paper. These two inks are particularly interesting since their rheology makes them unprintable using other digital printing techniques like inkjet. And, third, a striking concept consisting of the LIFT of a silver nanoparticle ink with continuous-wave laser radiation. In each one of these studies, the capabilities of LIFT with printed electronics applications are demonstrated by printing functional components and devices.