Additive, nanoscale patterning of metal films with a stamp and a surface chemistry mediated transfer process: Applications in plastic electronics

We describe a method for contact printing metal patterns with nanometer features over large areas. This nanotransfer printing ~nTP! technique relies on tailored surface chemistries to transfer metal films from the raised regions of a stamp to a substrate when these two elements are brought into intimate physical contact. The printing is purely additive, fast ~,15 s contact time!, and it occurs in a single processing step at ambient conditions. Features of varying dimensions, including sizes down to ;100 nm, can be printed with edge resolution better than 15 nm. Electrical contacts and interconnects for high-performance organic transistors and complementary inverter circuits have been successfully fabricated using nTP. © 2002 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1493226#