Abstract
Unidirectional dewetting enables the production of large-area thin films with high efficiency at low cost. Herein, we report homogeneous unidirectional dewetting on large-area microdroplet arrays via gravity-induced deformation in droplets combined with alternating lyophilic/lyophobic patterns. This process allows the scaled-up deposition of thin films, including organic semiconductors and transition metal oxides, through the autogenous shrinkage of droplets, which further enables the fabrication of large-area organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) arrays. The resulting field-effect mobility and on/off ratio of the fully printed OTFTs exceeded 13 cm2 V−1 s−1 and 108, respectively. Therefore, the presented dewetting method is promising to realize the roll-to-roll manufacture of large-area flexible electronics.
Highlights
Dewetting phenomena are widely investigated at present since they provide fundamental understanding of microfluid dynamics[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] and solutions for practical applications, including microfluidic devices,[1,2] anti-icing surfaces[5] and protein micropatterns.[8]
Dewetting organic semiconductor inks on a smooth surface enables the deposition of organic semiconductor thin films and electronic devices.[9]
Compared with other fabrication methods for microdroplet arrays (MDAs),[23,24,25] the method described here is easy to handle and can be conveniently scaled up; it can be generally used in a wide range of NPG Asia Materials solution processes, such as the deposition of thin films and nanoparticle arrays or parallelization assays for culturing cells
Summary
Dewetting phenomena are widely investigated at present since they provide fundamental understanding of microfluid dynamics[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] and solutions for practical applications, including microfluidic devices,[1,2] anti-icing surfaces[5] and protein micropatterns.[8] dewetting organic semiconductor inks on a smooth surface enables the deposition of organic semiconductor thin films and electronic devices.[9] In general, the dewetting process spontaneously occurs in a droplet when the following condition is satisfied: γgl - γls - γgs o 0 (γgl, γls and γgs are the gas-liquid, liquid-solid and gas-solid surface tensions, respectively). Inducing unidirectional dewetting has been identified as one of the most effective approaches to deposit highly aligned crystallized thin films for solution-processed electronics with high efficiency at low cost. It is still a challenge to selectively deposit aligned crystalline films without a template
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