Wilmington, MA--Pulsed ultraviolet (UV) light technology companyXenon Corporation has introduced the Sinteron 5000, one of the first commercial systems that rapidly sinters conductive inks at the manufacturing speeds needed to expand the printed electronics industry. The Sinteron 5000 uses Xenon's patented pulsed-light technology to deliver high-energy bursts of UV radiation that can sinter silver nanoinks on the production line at up to 100 feet per minute, without harming or overheating substrates such as plastic (such as positron emission tomography or PET paper), cloth, or paper.
"The printed electronics industry has been in the R&D stage for some time," said Lou Panico, CEO of Xenon. "With this announcement, we are helping to bring the technology to the manufacturing floor with a sintering system capable of meeting the high-speed demands of roll-to-roll and conveyer feed production." He said the company is also developing a production system for sintering copper inks, with several sintering tools currently available for R&D use.
The Xenon system includes ten independently controlled lamps with a touch panel that allows operators to precisely control roll speed, active lamps, overlap between lamps, lamp pitch, and lamp footprint. An integrated 16-inch-wide conveyor system can be easily removed for roll-to-roll applications.
Xenon Corporation provides pulsed UV light technology for a wide variety of industrial and research applications, including UV decontamination, UV curing, and UV food enhancement (http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2011/07/xenon-corp-uv-mushrooms.html).
SOURCE: Xenon Corporation; www.xenoncorp.com/sintering.html