Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T15:26:21.680Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

New Advances in Molding and Printing Processes for Organic/Plastic Electronics Using Chemically Modified Stiff, Photocured Poly (dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) Elastomers Designed for Nano-Resolution Soft Lithography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Kyung M. Choi
Affiliation:
Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey, 07974, U. S. A.
John A. Rogers
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, U. S. A.
Get access

Abstract

The development of new materials for organic/plastic electronics allows us to fabricate novel devices through unconventional approaches. The ‘soft lithography technique’ has been widely used in replicating and fabricating small features. This technique is a low cost alternative to photolithography by generating structures from masters to substrates, which employ ‘elastomeric materials’, such as highly stretchable silicon elastomer, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to replicate or transfer the original features to a variety of substrates by molding and printing processes. Since the resolution of pattern transfer significantly relies on the performance of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp materials, commercial PDMS materials have shown limitations in high fidelity pattern transfer due to their low physical toughness and high thermal expansion coefficients. For those reasons, pattern fabrications using conventional PDMS materials are unable to satisfy our set of diverse demands, especially in the area of nano-scale replication. To achieve high performance in molding and printing, here we introduce a new strategy, design and synthesis of a modified PDMS silicon elastomer that is a stiffer and photocurable element to achieve our specific task of nano-scale resolution soft lithography. We then demonstrated its unique capabilities for the case of nano-features (300 nm wide) with narrow and tall heights (600 nm height) of photoresist, which is one of the most challenging ‘nano-patterning’ tasks in advanced soft lithography, which is often limited in its use at the nano-scale with other commercially available elastomers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1. Rogers, J. A. and Bao, Z., “Printed Plastic Electronics and Paperlike Displays”, J. Poly. Sci., part A: Polymer Chemistry 40(20), 3327 (2002).Google Scholar
2. Rogers, J. A., Bao, Z., Baldwin, K., Dodabalapur, A., Crone, B., Raju, V. R., Kuck, V., Katz, H., Ewing, J., and Drzaic, P., “Paper-like Electronic Displays: Large-area Rubber-stamped Plastic Sheets of Electronics and Microencapsulated Electrophoretic Inks”, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 98(9), 4835 (2001).Google Scholar
3. Kim, E., Xia, Y. N., and Whitesides, G. M., “Micromolding in Capillaries; Applications in Materials Science”, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 118, 5722 (1996).Google Scholar
4. Xia, Y. N., Rogers, J. A., Paul, K. E., and Whitesides, G. M., “Unconventional Methods for Fabricating and Patterning Nanostructures”, Chem. Rev. 99, 1823 (1999).Google Scholar
5. Schmid, H. and Michel, B., “Siloxane Polymers for High-Resolution, High – Accuracy Soft Lithography”, Macromolecules 33, 3042 (2000).Google Scholar
6. Blanchet, G. and Rogers, J. A., “Printing Techniques for Plastic Electronics”, Journal of Imaging Science and Technology 47(4), 296 (2003).Google Scholar
7. Odom, T. W., Love, J. C., Wolfe, D. B., Paul, K. E., and Whitesides, G. M., “Improved Pattern Transfer in Soft Lithography using Composite Stamps”, Langmuir 18, 5314 (2002).Google Scholar
8. Choi, K. M. and Rogers, J. A., “A Photocurable Poly(dimethylsiloxane) Chemistry Designed for Soft Lithographic Molding and Printing in the Nanometer Regime”, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 125, 4060 (2003).Google Scholar