Foundry-compatible high-resolution patterning of vertically phase-separated semiconducting films for ultraflexible organic electronics

Binghao Wang,Yao Chen,Tobin J Marks,Sunghoon Lee,Liang-Wen Feng,Zhi Wang,Takao Someya,Zhihua Chen,Lizhen Huang,Tomoyuki Yokota,Gang Wang,Wei Huang,Antonio Facchetti

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-25059-8

Binghao Wang, Yao Chen + Show 11 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25059-8

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Solution processability of polymer semiconductors becomes an unfavorable factor during the fabrication of pixelated films since the underlying layer is vulnerable to subsequent solvent exposure. A foundry-compatible patterning process must meet requirements including high-throughput and high-resolution patternability, broad generality, ambient processability, environmentally benign solvents, and, minimal device performance degradation. However, known methodologies can only meet very few of these requirements. Here, a facile photolithographic approach is demonstrated for foundry-compatible high-resolution patterning of known p- and n-type semiconducting polymers. This process involves crosslinking a vertically phase-separated blend of the semiconducting polymer and a UV photocurable additive, and enables ambient processable photopatterning at resolutions as high as 0.5 μm in only three steps with environmentally benign solvents. The patterned semiconducting films can be integrated into thin-film transistors having excellent transport characteristics, low off-currents, and high thermal (up to 175 °C) and chemical (24 h immersion in chloroform) stability. Moreover, these patterned organic structures can also be integrated on 1.5 μm-thick parylene substrates to yield highly flexible (1 mm radius) and mechanically robust (5,000 bending cycles) thin-film transistors.

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Solution processability of polymer semiconductors becomes an unfavorable factor during the fabrication of pixelated films since the underlying layer is vulnerable to subsequent solvent exposure
Regarding the OTFT architectures, and to demonstrate architecture generality, we preferentially investigated bottom-gate topcontact (BGTC) OTFTs for DPP and top-gate bottom-contact (TGBC) OTFTs for N2200 since they are those where the pristine a Semiconducting Polymers b
We demonstrate a versatile strategy for foundry-compatible highresolution patterning of organic semiconducting films by crosslinking a vertically phase-separated blend of the semiconducting polymer and a UV photocurable additive (PA)

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Introduction

Solution processability of polymer semiconductors becomes an unfavorable factor during the fabrication of pixelated films since the underlying layer is vulnerable to subsequent solvent exposure. A facile photolithographic approach is demonstrated for foundry-compatible high-resolution patterning of known p- and n-type semiconducting polymers This process involves crosslinking a vertically phase-separated blend of the semiconducting polymer and a UV photocurable additive, and enables ambient processable photopatterning at resolutions as high as 0.5 μm in only three steps with environmentally benign solvents. The patterning process is highly efficient and minimizes waste since it requires only 3 steps, versus 7+ steps for conventional photolithography (Fig. 1b and Supplementary Fig. 1) Both the film deposition and patterning processes can be effectively carried out using environmentally benign green solvents such as tetrahydrofuran (THF) as a proof-ofconcept.

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