A review of thin-film transistors/circuits fabrication with 3D self-aligned imprint lithography

Abstract

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a promising method for the fabrication of micro/nanostructures through a simple, low-cost, and high throughput process. Imprinted 2D structure with high resolution has been demonstrated successfully for certain applications including magnetic hard disks and optical gratings. Manufacturing low-cost electronic devices that require patterned multi-layers with NIL is very challenging, particularly for those requiring different patterns. In recent years, considerable effort has been made using the self-aligned imprinting technique, opening an alternative way to develop and fabricate complementary flexible electronics. In this paper we review thin film transistor (TFT) fabrication with 3D self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL), which enables the patterning and alignment of submicron features on meter-scale flexible substrates in the roll-to-roll configuration. The 3D SAIL solves the problem of precision interlayer registry of devices on a moving web by encoding all geometric information required for all device patterning steps into a monolithic imprinted 3D structure.

Experimental and modeling study of low-voltage field-effect transistors fabricated with molecularly aligned copolymer floating films

“…FTM demonstrates many practical benefits; it requires the use of cost-effectively and widely available materials (Eg, Gl and water); it has already been reported to show compatibility with a wide range of thiophene-based polymers and solvents (toluene, chloroform, tetrahydrofuran, dichloromethane, etc) [9][10][11][12][13]; only a small amount of polymer solution (∼20 μl) is required to obtain well-aligned floatingfilms [8,9]; multilayer thin films can be formed using a single floating-film [8,11,21], etc. Despite all these advantages, some areas of the present platform of FTM require improvement compared to other developed methods, such as Langmuir Blodgett [33], ink-jet printing [34] and lithography [35]. For instance, the present platform only allows formation of ~three thin films using one floating-film, and the circular orientation of the floating-film also poses difficulty for practical applications.…”

Development of a High‐Performance, Anti‐Fouling Optical Diffuser Inspired by Morpho Butterfly's Nanostructure

“…Therefore, the hierarchical design was simplified into 2-D (in-plane) structures to enable practical fabrication by nanoimprint lithography. [50,51] Although the vertical randomness in height is preferable for anti-grating, [46] we previously demonstrated that 2-D randomness combined with binary height also provides sufficient phase variations for anti-grating, allowing for this simplification. [52] Figure 1d illustrates the cross section of the simplified design, wherein 2-D nanopatterns composed of random widths and binary height were created on either surface.…”

“…To fabricate the designed diffusers, we employed nanoimprint lithography as it can create well-defined nanostructures at high throughput. [50,51] The fabrication process is depicted in Figure 4. First, silicon molds containing the negative-type nanopatterns were prepared by lithography and dry etching; we performed ebeam lithography for prototyping in this study.…”

A multi-scale E-jet 3D printing regulated by structured multi-physics field

“…Hitherto, a variety of micro/nanoscale manufacturing technologies have been developed. For example, lithography is a typical method whose resolution can reach tens of nanometers and is widely used to manufacture high resolution functional structures [9,10]. However, the cost of mask, complex processing steps, expensive equipment and ultra-clean environment limit its extensive application [11].…”