Conductivity modification of silver salt-filled polyimide film by pulsed KrF laser

The ultraviolet (UV) laser treatment of polyimide films can lead to the formation of a conductive area. The formation of a conductive layer starts at a threshold dosage. This conductive layer consists of carbon-rich clusters. Silver salt added to the polyimide can modify the process and resulting parameters. Polyimide films filled with silver salt were investigated to study the effect of different salt concentrations. The influence of salt concentration and the influence and shot numbers of excimer laser on the electrical characteristics and on the structural parameters were obtained. Structural characterization was carried out by applying a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive x-ray analyzer (EDS) and atomic force microscope (AFM). The observations revealed “phonon-assisted hopping” could be accepted as a conduction model. The study showed that the silver salt promotes the carbonization of polyimide, and in this way, it has remarkable influence on the formation of an irradiated conductive layer.