Abstract
This work presents a novel manufacturing route for obtaining high performance bendable field effect transistors (FET) by embedding silicon (Si) microwires (2.5 μm thick) in layers of solution-processed dielectric and metallic layers. The objective of this study is to explore heterogeneous integration of Si with polymers and to exploit the benefits of both microelectronics and printing technologies. Arrays of Si microwires are developed on silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers and transfer printed to polyimide (PI) substrate through a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) carrier stamp. Following the transfer printing of Si microwires, two different processing steps were developed to obtain top gate top contact and back gate top contact FETs. Electrical characterizations indicate devices having mobility as high as 117.5 cm2 V−1 s−1. The fabricated devices were also modeled using SILVACO Atlas. Simulation results show a trend in the electrical response similar to that of experimental results. In addition, a cyclic test was performed to demonstrate the reliability and mechanical robustness of the Si μ-wires on flexible substrates.
Highlights
Flexible electronics have attracted significant interest in recent years due to increasing demand in a range of applications such as robotics, prosthetics, health monitoring, etc., which require conformability of electronic systems to 3D curved surfaces [1]
Electronic systems is much needed and the research in this area is heading towards merging of the well-established microelectronics technology and conventional coating and printing techniques [2, 5,6,7]
For better hydrophilic property and enhancing the adhesion of subsequent layers, the substrates were treated by plasma oxidation and subsequent layers were printed immediately. This step is essential for the back-gated field effect transistors (FET) structure, as the silver gate electrode was to be patterned with screen-printing technique
Summary
Flexible electronics have attracted significant interest in recent years due to increasing demand in a range of applications such as robotics, prosthetics, health monitoring, etc., which require conformability of electronic systems to 3D curved surfaces [1]. Some of the driving features for flexible electronics are the requirements such as conformable integration to nonplanar surfaces, portability, foldability and large area coverage [2,3,4]. Organic materials have the advantages of mechanical flexibility, low material and fabrication cost. They are often compatible with roll-to-roll processing and the thermal budget of polymeric substrates. Despite these attractive features, obtaining highperformance devices from organic semiconductor remains a major challenge [8,9,10]. Devices made of organic materials typically have low charge carrier mobility (~1 with respect to ~1000 cm V−1 s−1 of single crystal Si) [10,11,12], which makes
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