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Combustion-Assisted Photonic Annealing of Printable Graphene Inks via Exothermic Binders
Ethan B Secor1, Theodore Z Gao1, Manuel H Dos Santos1
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering and ⊥Department of Chemistry, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University , Evanston, Illinois 60208, United States.
Abstract:
High-throughput and low-temperature processing of high-performance nanomaterial inks is an important technical challenge for large-area, flexible printed electronics. In this report, we demonstrate nitrocellulose as an exothermic binder for photonic annealing of conductive graphene inks, leveraging the rapid decomposition kinetics and built-in energy of nitrocellulose to enable versatile process integration. This strategy results in superlative electrical properties that are comparable to extended thermal annealing at 350 °C, using a pulsed light process that is compatible with thermally sensitive substrates. The resulting porous microstructure and broad liquid-phase patterning compatibility are exploited for printed graphene microsupercapacitors on paper-based substrates.