Studies of noise properties of thick-film conducting lines from Au or PdAg conductive pastes on LTCC or alumina substrates are reported. Experiments have been carried out at the room temperature on samples prepared in the form of meanders by traditional screen-printing or laser-shaping technique. Due to a low resistance of the devices under test (DUTs), low-frequency noise spectra have been measured for the dc-biased samples arranged in a bridge configuration, transformer-coupled to a low-noise amplifier. The detailed analysis of noise sources in the signal path and its transfer function, including the transformer, has been carried out, and a procedure for measurement setup self-calibration has been described. The 1/f noise component originating from resistance fluctuations has been found to be dominant in all DUTs. The analysis of experimental data leads to the conclusion that noise is produced in the bends of meanders rather than in their straight segments. It occurs that noise of Au-based laser-shaped lines is significantly smaller than screen-printed ones. PdAg lines have been found more resistive but simultaneously less noisy than Au-based lines.

Graphene is a very promising material for potential applications in many fields. Since manufacturing technologies of graphene are still at the developing stage, low-frequency noise measurements as a tool for evaluating their quality is proposed. In this work, noise properties of polymer thick-film resistors with graphene nano-platelets as a functional phase are reported. The measurements were carried out in room temperature. 1/f noise caused by resistance fluctuations has been found to be the main component in the specimens. The parameter values describing noise intensity of the polymer thick-film specimens have been calculated and compared with the values obtained for other thick-film resistors and layers used in microelectronics. The studied polymer thick-film specimens exhibit rather poor noise properties, especially for the layers with a low content of the functional phase.