Suppression of the Coffee Ring Effect in a Single Solvent-Based Silicon Nanoparticle Ink

Silicon (Si) is made printable by dispersing Si nanoparticles in a single organic solvent. Viscoelastic properties of the prepared inks as well as the uniformity of inkjet-printed thin films are investigated in dependence on the Si volume fraction. It has been demonstrated that no ink additives are needed to completely suppress the occurrence of the coffee ring effect. This is obtained by increasing the ink’s volume fraction to induce gelation in order to generate elasticity. The printability of our inks is investigated in terms of Weber, Reynolds, and Ohnesorge numbers and found to be maintained even at high particle loads due to shear-thinning viscosity behavior. When printed onto tungsten (W) substrates, Si inks with ϕ(Si) = 0.4% and ϕ(Si) = 2.1% leave a ring stain after drying, whereas coffee rings are absent for inks with ϕ(Si) = 3.0% and above. The reason for this is a significant ink elasticity achieved by the buildup of a gel network for higher particle loads, which leads to thixotropy-like properties. These are low viscosity for printability and elevated elasticity during ink drying, made possible by a breakup of the gel network during drop formation in conjunction with a rapid network reformation after deposition.