Fabrication of transistors on flexible substrates: from mass-printing to high-resolution alternative lithography strategies.

In this report, the development of conventional, mass-printing strategies into high-resolution, alternative patterning techniques is reviewed with the focus on large-area patterning of flexible thin-film transistors (TFTs) for display applications. In the first part, conventional and digital printing techniques are introduced and categorized as far as their development is relevant for this application area. The limitations of conventional printing guides the reader to the second part of the progress report: alternative-lithographic patterning on low-cost flexible foils for the fabrication of flexible TFTs.

Double-layer imprint lithography on wafers and foils from the submicrometer to the millimeter scale.

In this paper, a thermal imprint technique, double-layer nanoimprint lithography (dlNIL), is introduced, allowing complete filling of features in the dimensional range of submicrometer to millimeter. The imprinting and filling quality of dlNIL was studied on Si substrates as a model system and compared to results obtained with regular NIL (NIL) and reverse NIL (rNIL). Wavy foils were imprinted with NIL, rNIL and dlNIL and the patterning results compared and discussed.