Conductive AFM of transfer printed nano devices

Abstract

Nano diodes show great potential for applications in detectors, communications and energy harvesting. However, to make them suitable for low-cost mass production, these nano devices have to be fabricated reliably over large areas while minimizing process time and costs. Printing techniques are promising candidates to overcome these economical drawbacks of conventional nanolithography without a significant loss in structure quality. In this work, we focus on nano transfer printing (nTP) to fabricate nm-scale diodes over extensive areas. Using a temperature-enhanced process, several millions of diodes were transfer-printed in one single step. We show the reliable transfer of functioning Schottky and MIM diodes of different sizes, which demonstrates the versatility and usability of our approach (nTP), paving the way to numerous applications in the fields of e.g. infrared detection or energy harvesting. The nano devices are characterized electrically by conductive Atomic Force Microscopy (c-AFM) measurements. For these MIM structures, quantum-mechanical tunneling was determined to be the main conduction mechanism across the metal-oxide-metal junction.