Screen Printing: An Ease Thin Film Technique

Screen printing is a process of pushing ink of material to be deposited onto a surface through a fine-mesh screen to create a desired pattern. Printing on a variety of surfaces is feasible with screen printing. Screen printing permits printing on a variety of shapes and sizes of surfaces. It is thought that screen printing was created in Asia about the year 500 A.D. Silk-screen printing had progressed to a high level in China and Japan by the 1600 s. It made its way over Europe gradually. The first patent for silk-screen stencil printing was granted to Samuel Simon of England in 1907. The basic premise of screen printing is to apply ink to the substrate using a specified mask and a squeegee to create a pattern on the substrate. Specifying the intended purpose, the substrate and screen mesh might be made of cloth, plastic, metal, or any other material. Film properties such as thickness, uniformity, microstructure and morphology are governed by several parameters including the geometry of the squeegee, screen frame, mesh count, ink properties, the sintering temperature, and sintering time. This chapter examines two commonly used screen-printing processes, as well as their structure, operation, strengths and drawbacks, and current research status. This chapter discusses the complex multi-step, multi-material, composite and multi-layer process of screen printing. This chapter covers various applications of screen-printed electrodes, including printed electrodes, transistors, solar cells, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), supercapacitors, electrochromic display (ECD), piezoelectric display, anti-reflection coating (ARC) and batteries to provide a clear understanding of the method in terms of its versatility, scalability, and simplicity for future research opportunities.