Design and validation of a novel master-making process chain for organic and large area electronics on flexible substrates

This paper presents a novel process chain for fabrication of replication masters for serial manufacture. The proposed process chain is validated for serial fabrication of (large area) organic electronic devices on flexible substrates. The advantages and limitations of the component technologies in the proposed manufacturing route are discussed and their interdependencies in a process chain for producing both 2.5D and 3D nano- and micro-structures are analysed. The proposed master-making route relies on using different technologies for micro-structuring and sub-micron and nano patterning that are applied to the fabrication of Ni shims incorporating different length scale features. In particular, the capabilities of photolithography as a micro-structuring technology were combined with those of FIB machining to add sub-micron and nano-features on micro patterned fused silica templates. Then, by applying UV nanoimprint lithography such templates were validated and their nano and micro-structures were consistently replicated in one step. Finally, the feature transfer of such imprints onto Ni shims was also successfully accomplished with only minor deviations from the target dimensions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.