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The rapid sintering of printable metal nanoparticle inks is vital for the industrial mass production of electronic devices. In this paper, we report a rapid laser annealing method for printed Ag nanoparticle-based inks. We also fabricate Ag circuits and organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) on flexible plastic substrates through spontaneous patterning under deep ultraviolet (DUV) exposure. Compared to the conventional thermal annealing, laser annealing significantly reduces the processing time from 3600 to 10 s while preventing damage caused by excessive heat. The OTFT with laser-annealed Ag source/drain electrodes achieved good performance with saturated mobility of 1.68 cm $^{{2}}\cdot \text{V}^{-{1}}\cdot \text{s}^{-{1}}$ , high-reliability factor of 86.75%, and large saturated drain current resulting from the small channel resistance. This rapid laser annealing method is feasible for printing flexible electronics using metal nanoparticle-based inks in industrial mass production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rate equations for the quasi-three-level actively Q-switched lasers are obtained by considering the reabsorption of the lower laser level and the spatial distributions of the intracavity photon density and the population inversion density. These rate equations are normalized by introducing three new parameters. By solving the normalized rate equation numerically, a group of general curves is generated. These curves can give a good understanding of the dependences of the laser pulse characteristics on the new parameters. The curves and the related formulae can also be used to estimate the laser pulse characteristics of any quasi-three-level actively Q-switched laser. A sample calculation for a 946-nm actively Q-switched Nd:YAG ceramic laser is presented to demonstrate the use of the related formulae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]