Currently, silver nanoparticles have attracted large interest in the photonics, electrics, analytical, and antimicrobial/biocidal fields due to their excellent optical, electrical, biological, and antibacterial properties. The versatility in generating different sizes, shapes, and surface morphologies results in a wide range of applications of silver nanoparticles in various industrial and health-related areas. In industrial applications, silver nanoparticles are used to produce conductive inks, which allows the construction of electronic devices on low-cost and flexible substrates by using various printing techniques. In order to achieve successful printed patterns, the necessary formulation and synthesis need to be engineered to fulfil the printing technique requirements. Additional sintering processes are typically further required to remove the added polymers, which are used to produce the desired adherence, viscosity, and reliable performance. This contribution presents a review of the synthesis of silver nanoparticles via different methods (chemical, physical and biological methods) and the application of silver nanoparticles under the electrical field. Formulation of silver inks and formation of conductive patterns by using different printing techniques (inkjet printing, screen printing and aerosol jet printing) are presented. Post-printing treatments are also discussed. A summary concerning outlooks and perspectives is presented at the end of this review.

Four cardanol-based phenalkamines (named PK1, PK2, PK3 and PK4, respectively) with different polyethylenepolyamine chain lengths were synthesized using ethylenediamine, diethylenetriamine, triethylenetetramine and pentaethylenehexamine, respectively, and then air-dried and heat-cured epoxies were prepared using these four phenalkamines as curing agents. The effects of the polyethylenepolyamine chain length on the mechanical and thermal properties of these epoxies were investigated. The adhesion and hardness of air-cured coatings, and the thermogravimetric analysis, dynamic mechanical properties, swelling degree and mechanical properties of heat-cured epoxies were investigated. The results show that the crosslinking density of cured epoxies calculated based on the dynamic mechanical results and rubber elasticity theory follows the order of DGEBA/PK1 < DGEBA/PK3 < DGEBA/PK2 < DGEBA/PK4, which can be affected by many factors such as chain length, viscosity and phenalkamine dosage. The chain length of polyethylenepolyamines follows the order of PK1 < PK2 < PK3 < PK4. A longer chain length contains more secondary amines, which can react with more epoxy groups and therefore form more tertiary amino groups. As a consequence, the curing reaction can be catalyzed during the epoxy-secondary amine reactions, resulting in a higher curing degree. A similar trend is observed in thermogravimetric analysis and mechanical properties, but an opposite trend is observed in swelling degree of epoxies. Thus, the epoxies cured by phenalkamines with a longer polyethylenepolyamine chain generally have better balanced mechanical and thermal properties.

This paper presents a transient-enhanced digital LDO with adaptive clock edge control. An under-strength detector and an adaptive clock edge multiplier are devised to achieve adaptive tuning of the clock signal, which generates a double rising edge clock signal. This method can be combined with traditional digital feedforward techniques to significantly improve the transient response of the digital low-dropout regulator. The proposed DLDO is implemented using a 180nm CMOS process and achieves a maximum current efficiency of 98.8% and quiescent current of 9.8µA when operated at input and output voltages of 0.9V and 0.85V. The proposed method reduces the response time by 50%.