Synthesis and Characterization of Copper Nanoparticles (Cu-Nps) using Rongalite as Reducing Agent and Photonic Sintering of Cu-Nps Ink for Printed Electronics

Copper nanoparticles (Cu-Nps) are one of the promising material for the advancement of nanoscience and technology. In this work, we successfully synthesized Cu-Nps using sodium hydroxymethanesulinate (Rongalite) as a novel reducing agent via solution process. Cu-Nps were achieved from chemical reduction of copper salt within 10-20 min at low temperature without using any complexing agent. In order to investigate the phase, size, and composition of the synthesized Cu-Nps, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were employed. Average particle size of the synthesized Cu-Nps is 152 nm. It is expected that the outcomes of this study take a step closer towards designing general strategies for a simple, environment friendly and low cost synthesis method of Cu-Nps. The synthesized Cu-Nps are mixed with commercial Cu-Nps and sintered using photonic sintering process. To determine the optimum sintering energy, the flash light irradiation energy was varied and optimized. An XRD and SEM were used to characterize the sintered Cu-Nps. The resulting sintered Cu-Nps exhibited a low resistivity (20.73 μΩcm) without any damages of the polymer substrate.