One-Pot Synthesis of Functionalised rGO/AgNPs Hybrids as Pigments for Highly Conductive Printing Inks

Abstract

This work provides a method for the development of conductive water-based printing inks for gravure, flexography and screen-printing incorporating commercial resins that are already used in the printing industry. The development of the respective conductive materials/pigments is based on the simultaneous (in one step) reduction of silver salts and graphene oxide in the presence of 2,5-diaminobenzenesulfonic acid that is used for the first time as the common in-situ reducing agent for these two reactions. The presence of aminophenylsulfonic derivatives is essential for the reduction procedure and in parallel leads to the enrichment of the graphene surface with aminophenylsulfonic groups that provide a high hydrophilicity to the final materials/pigments.

Keywords

• graphene
• conductive inks
• reduced graphene oxide
• gravure
• flexography
• screen printing