Large-area plastic nanogap electronics enabled by adhesion lithography

Abstract

Large-area manufacturing of flexible nanoscale electronics has long been sought by the printed electronics industry. However, the lack of a robust, reliable, high throughput and low-cost technique that is capable of delivering high-performance functional devices has hitherto hindered commercial exploitation. Herein we report on the extensive range of capabilities presented by adhesion lithography (a-Lith), an innovative patterning technique for the fabrication of coplanar nanogap electrodes with arbitrarily large aspect ratio. We use this technique to fabricate a plethora of nanoscale electronic devices based on symmetric and asymmetric coplanar electrodes separated by a nanogap < 15 nm. We show that functional devices including self-aligned-gate transistors, radio frequency diodes and rectifying circuits, multi-colour organic light-emitting nanodiodes and multilevel non-volatile memory devices, can be fabricated in a facile manner with minimum process complexity on a range of substrates. The compatibility of the formed nanogap electrodes with a wide range of solution processable semiconductors and substrate materials renders a-Lith highly attractive for the manufacturing of large-area nanoscale opto/electronics on arbitrary size and shape substrates.

Adhesion lithography enables coplanar nanogap electrode fabrication and allows for the realisation of nanoscale electronics manufacturing

A collaborative team led by Thomas Anthopoulos from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology demonstrated a novel method for patterning coplanar electrodes with inter-electrode distances of less than 15 nm and arbitrarily large aspect ratios. This facile manufacturing method, called adhesion lithography, was used to fabricate a series of functional nanoscale electronic devices on various substrates. These flexible electronic devices, which are technologically relevant, included self-aligned-gate transistors, radio frequency diodes and rectifying circuits, multi-colour organic light-emitting diodes and multilevel non-volatile memory devices. Given its versatility in the fabrication of functional electronic devices and its solution-processing compatibility with a range of semiconductors and substrate materials, adhesion lithography is an attractive processing method for the high-throughput manufacture of large-scale flexible electronics at the nanoscale.