<title>Matrix-assisted laser transfer of electronic materials for direct-write applications</title>

Abstract

A novel laser-based direct-write technique, called Matrix Assisted Pulsed Laser Evaporation Direct Write (MAPLE-DW), has been developed for the rapid prototyping of electronic devices. MAPLE-DW is a maskless deposition process operating under ambient conditions which allows for the rapid fabrication of complex patterns of electronic materials. The technique utilizes a laser transparent substrate with one side coated with a matrix of the materials of interest mixed with an organic vehicle.The laser is focussed through the transparent substrate onto the matrix coating which aids in transferring the materials of interest to an acceptor substrate placed parallel to the matrix surface.With MAPLE-DW, diverse materials including metals, dielectrics, ferroelectrics, ferrites and polymers have been transferred onto various acceptor substrates. The capability for laser-modifying the surface of the acceptor substrate and laser-post-processing the transferred material has been demonstrated as well. This simple yet powerful technique has been used to fabricate passive thin film electronic components such as resistors, capacitors and metal lines with good functional properties. An overview of these key results along with a discussion of their materials and properties characterization will be presented.Keywords: direct vvrite, laser forward transfer, matrix assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE), matrix assisted pulsed laser evaporation direct write (MAPLE-DW), rapid prototyping, electronics devices.

Laser Direct Writing of Hydrous Ruthenium Dioxide Micro-Pseudocapacitors

“…Thin film hydrous ruthenium dioxide planar pseudocapacitors are deposited using the MAPLE-DW technique that has been previously described in detail [9,10]. Figure 1a shows a schematic of the experimental approach.…”

“…We take a unique approach under the Laser Engineered Advanced Power Sources (LEAPS) program at the Naval Research Laboratory, to overcome these difficulties by using a laser direct writing technique, MAPLE-DW [9,10]. This technique produces thin films of the hydrous material with the desired morphological properties and without the need for high temperature or lithographic processing following deposition.…”

Laser Forward Transfer of Electronic and Power Generating Materials

“…This variation on the LIFT process was originally intended for high speed laser color printing applications, and was called laser ablation transfer (Tolbert, 1993a). More recently this approach has been used for the laser direct-write of phosphor powders (Fitz-Gerald, 2000) and extremely laser sensitive materials such as DNA biomolecules (Fernández-Pradas, 2004;.…”

“…As a further generalization, the idea of using an organic binder in the process can be applied to the direct transfer of rheological systems (Piqué, 2000b;Auyeung 2000). The realization that pastes, inks, suspensions, and sol-gel solutions can be deposited in patterns without physical or chemical modification during their transfer from the ribbon to the acceptor substrate, opened the door to a number of applications with a wider range of materials and formulations.…”

Laser Direct-Write of Metallic Nanoparticle Inks

“…Alternatively, laser direct-write (LDW) of rheological materials [9] can be used with a wider range of ink viscosities with the only stipulation that the ink layer absorbs sufficient laser energy and remains adherent to a support long enough to allow the laser transfer. Laser direct-write has been successfully demonstrated for the transfer of metallic pastes [10], various electronics passive components [11] and other electronics materials [12,13].…”