Harvesting and Transferring Vertical Pillar Arrays of Single-Crystal Semiconductor Devices to Arbitrary Substrates

Abstract

Development of devices that can be fabricated on amorphous substrates using multiple single-crystal semiconductors with different physical, electrical, and optical characteristics is important for highly efficient portable and flexible electronics, optoelectronics, and energy conversion devices. Reducing the use of single-crystal substrates can contribute to low-cost and environmentally benign devices covering a large area. We demonstrate a technique to harvest and transfer vertically aligned single-crystal semiconductor micro- and nanopillars from a single-crystal substrate to a low-cost carrier substrate while simultaneously preserving the integrity, order, shape, and fidelity of the transferred pillar arrays. The transfer technique facilitates multilayer process integration by exploiting a vertical embossing and lateral fracturing method using a spin-coated polymer layer on a carrier substrate. Electrical contacts are formed using a bilayer of metal and conducting polymer such as gold (Au) and polyaniline (PAni). In this method, the original single-crystal substrate can be repeatedly used for generating more devices and is minimally consumed, whereas in conventional fabrication methods, the substrate is employed solely as a mechanical support. This heterogeneous integration technique potentially offers devices with low physical fill factor contributing to lower leakage current and noise, reduced parasitic capacitance, and enhanced photon-semiconductor interactions, and enables heterogeneous multimaterial integration such as silicon with compound semiconductors for rapidly expanding large-scale applications, including low-cost and flexible electronics, displays, tactile sensors, and energy conversion systems.