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 similar to100 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. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.