Nickel-copper hybrid electrodes self-adhered onto a silicon wafer by supersonic cold-spray

Abstract High-performance electrodes are fabricated through supersonic spraying of nickel and copper particles. These electrodes yield low specific resistivities, comparable to electrodes produced by screen-printed silver paste and light-induced plating. The appeal of this fabrication method is the low cost of copper and large area scalability of supersonic spray-coating techniques. The copper and nickel electrode was fabricated in the open air without any pre- or post-treatment. The spray-coated copper-nickel electrode was characterized by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction, and energy dispersive spectroscopy. Although both SEM and TEM images confirmed voids trapped between flattened particles in the fabricated electrode, this electrode's resistivity was order 10^-6 Ω cm, which is comparable to the bulk value for pure copper.