Silicon inks are used for printed electronics. Silicon ink is comprised of silicon nano-particles dispersed in an environmentally friendly blend of chemicals and formulated to be compatible with low-cost industry standard screen printers.NanoGram has developed atechniques to make such inks. The company's patented technology involves injecting silicon compounds in a gaseous phase (such as silane gas) into an optically modified laser beam field, whereby the huge amount of energy absorbed by the precursor breaks the compounds into its constituent materials, such as silicon metal and hydrogen which reform in the reaction zone to form pure silicon nano particles and hydrogen gas. The silicon nano particles are immediately and rapidly cooled as they exit the reaction zone to freeze the particle size and crystallinity and are collected in a filter.further the silicon particles are doping during the reaction in highly controllable doping levels. Once collected, the particles are used to formulate silicon inks.

Courtesy: NanoGram, http://www.nanogram.com/

The silicon is too expensive, fragile, and slow to market. To replce this a technology in the form of printable electronics and electronic components using metallic inks is emerging. Using such inks and conventional printing techniques circuits can be printed on flexible substrates and every print can be made unique by using digital printing techniques. metallic inks can also be used to print transistors, displays, interconnects, sensors and even sound actuators.