Inkjet Printing: A Cheap and Easy-to-Use Alternative to Wire Bonding for Academics

Many groups in academia are having problems patterning interconnections to small electrodes using wire bonding, including metal melting and detachment of previously bonded wires. It is a fact that the industry makes reliable wire bonding using automatic setups and expert personnel, and also that many groups in academia can do wire bonding reliably. However, it is also true that wire bonding is much more problematic than other techniques often employed to pattern interconnections, such as lithography or inkjet printing. In this article, the contact resistance and maximum currents driven by metallic interconnections patterned via wire bonding, lithography, and inkjet printing are compared. It is concluded that interconnections patterned via inkjet printing meet the requirements of many types of experiments, and that inkjet printing is a very cheap and easy-to-use alternative to wire bonding, especially attractive for academics.