We report on the substitution of silver nanoparticles' inks by silver microparticle dispersions as a material for the production of printable silver tracks by laser melting. This approach is promising, because it helps to reduce the production costs of such silver tracks. Though silver dispersions used as materials for laser melting mostly contain polyvinylpyrrolidone as a stabilizer, which results in the appearance of an undesired balling effect of silver during laser melting, the authors test stabilizers differing in molecular weight and functionality. The resulting differences in colloidal and physicochemical properties are investigated and related to the final silver layer quality

Crystallization of Pb(Zr0.53Ti0.47)O3 (PZT) films derived from sol–gel precursor solutions using a continuous-wave (CW) 980 nm semiconductor laser is discussed in this paper. By using a 0.3 M precursor solution and repeating 4 times a sequence of drying, pyrolysis, and laser annealing (LA) processes, 150-nm-thick PZT films with (111)-preferred texture are obtained. By adjusting the laser power according to the variation in film thickness, PZT crystallization is induced throughout the film, which is confirmed by electron diffraction patterns. The dielectric constant and loss tangent measured with an oscillation voltage of 0.8 V at 10 kHz are 1200 and 0.078, respectively. The remanent polarization and coercive field of the LA-PZT film are 30 µC/cm2 and 104 kV/cm, respectively. The field-induced strain property calculated from the voltage-displacement curve obtained by an atomic force microscopy measurement is comparable to that of the PZT film fabricated by rapid thermal annealing.

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