Thermal Assisted UV-Ozone Treatment to Improve Reliability of Ag Nanoparticle Thin Films

We employed UV-Ozone treatment method for the fabrication of dense and highly conductive nanoparticle thin films. We demonstrated the UV-Ozone treatment effect on the silver nanoparticle thin films as a function of time and temperature. The capping layers of nanoparticles were decomposed after UV-Ozone treatment and dense nanoparticle thin films were obtained. Moreover, electrical and mechanical properties of the thin films after UV-Ozone treatment were measured by using resistance measurements under tension in an in-situ tensile tester. The initial resistance of nanoparticle thin films was decreased by 82.6% with optimized UV-Ozone treatment condition of 150°C for 20 minutes.