An additive method to fabricate conductive lines and electronic components directly by laser microcladding electronic materials

In this article, a laser direct-write method to fabricate conductive lines and electronic components on insulating boards by using laser microcladding electronic materials is reported. A workstation for implementing this direct-write method was developed, which integrated material deposition (micropen) and laser processing on a single machine. With the computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) capability of the workstation, conductive lines, resistors, capacitors, inductors, and thick-film sensors with different patterns were fabricated successfully by this technique in air without mask and with high deposition rates. The minimum widths of the conductive lines and other functional materials were much less than those obtained by the conventional screen printing method. The experimental results demonstrated that passive components and thick-film sensors made by this method have the same properties as those made by conventional thick-film methods, whereas thick films fabricated by this method have much lower widths than those fabricated by the conventional thick-film method. This technique provides a novel method to fabricate the conductive lines and electronic components with high precision and high speed.