Business Corner
STRATEGIES & ANALYSIS
BY PHIL PHILLIPS, PHD
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
PHILLIPS@CHEMARKCONSULTING.NET
Where do inks & coatings intersect?
In the
first of a
two-part
series,
exploring
emerging
application
areas for inks
and coatings.
Wikipedia defines ink as a liquid con- taining various pigments and/or dyes used for coloring a surface to produce
an image, text or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush or quill.
Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in letterpress and lithographic printing.
Ink is a complex medium composed of solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants, solubilizers, surfactants, particulate matter,
fluorescers and other materials.
Wikipedia defines a coating as a covering
that is applied to the surface of an object, usually referred to as the substrate. In many cases
coatings are applied to improve surface properties of the substrate, such as appearance, adhesion, wet ability, corrosion resistance, wear
resistance and scratch resistance. In other
cases, in particular in printing processes and
semiconductor device fabrication where the
substrate is a wafer, the coating forms an essential part of the finished product.
Coating and printing processes involve the
application of a thin film of functional material to a substrate, such as paper, fabric, film,
foil or sheet stock. A roll of substrate, when
wound through the coating machine, is typically called a web.
Coatings may be applied as liquids, gases
or solids. Coatings can be measured and tested for proper opacity and film thickness by
using a drawdown card.
Conductive ink is an ink that conducts
electricity, these materials may be classed as
fired high solids systems or polymer thick
film (PTF) systems that allow circuits to be
drawn or printed on a variety of substrate
materials such as polyester to paper. These
types of materials usually contain conductive materials such as powdered or flaked
silver and carbon like materials.
Conductive inks can be a more economical
way to lay down a modern conductive trace
when compared to traditional industrial
standards such as etching copper from cop-
per plated substrates to form the same con-
ductive traces on relevant substrates, as
printing is a purely additive process produc-
ing little to no waste steams which then have
to be recovered or treated. Silver inks have
multiple uses today, including printing RFID
tags as used in modern transit tickets, and
they can be used to improvise or repair cir-
cuits on printed circuit boards. Computer
keyboards contain membranes with printed
circuits that sense when a key is pressed.
Windshield defrosters consisting of resistive
traces applied to the glass are also printed.
