Selective laser sintering allows the facile fabrication of metal conductive layers on flexible substrates, but its application to large area electronics has limited throughput due to direct writing characteristics. In this work, a modified optical scheme is introduced for the production of a dense patterned conductive layer and a patternless thin film conductive layer. In particular, the focusing lens is replaced by a microlens array or a cylindrical lens to produce a plurality of beamlets or extended focal lines. The altered optical settings have been found to be advantageous for the generation of repeated conductive patterns or planar sintering of the silver nanoparticle ink layer. It has further been confirmed that these optical schemes are equally compatible with polymer substrates for application to large area flexible electronics