Screen and Stencil Printing

Flatbed screen printing and stencil printing have been used successfully for decades in numerous graphic and technical applications. Well-known application examples include the printing of solder paste for the SMT-assembly of printed circuit boards, the printing of fine heating structures on vehicle windows or the printing of antenna structures with conductive paste. Flatbed screen printing also established itself as the dominant metallization process for the metallization of silicon solar cells back in the 1980s due to its high productivity and the ability to print fine structures with high quality. Compared to other printing processes, screen and stencil printing are characterized by their high productivity and great flexibility in terms of substrates and pastes. Both processes can be used to produce large-area structures as well as extremely fine conductor paths in excellent quality and with very good electrical properties.

At Fraunhofer ISE, we have been working intensively with our industrial partners for decades on the further development of these proven and efficient processes. The focus is not only on the high-precision metallization of silicon solar cells with ultra-fine lines, but also on other promising applications such as the print coating of fuel cells, sensors and other technical applications.

Our Infrastructure and Services for Screen and Stencil Printing:

• Highly automated industrial screen printing lines for high-precision thick-film coating of the finest structures (e.g. solar cell metallization, functional layers)
• Inline inspection system with high-precision detection of print quality
• Semi-automatic precision screen printing system
• Development and production of our own screen printing stencils