Large-area photonic lift-off process for flexible thin-film transistors

Adam M Weidling, Vikram S. Turkani, Vahid Akhavan, Kurt A. Schroder, Sarah L. Swisher

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Fabricating flexible electronics on plastic is often limited by the poor dimensional stability of polymer substrates. To mitigate, glass carriers are used during fabrication, but removing the plastic substrate from a carrier without damaging the electronics remains challenging. Here we utilize a large-area, high-throughput photonic lift-off (PLO) process to rapidly separate polymer films from rigid carriers. PLO uses a 150 µs pulse of broadband light from flashlamps to lift-off functional thin films from glass carrier substrates coated with a light absorber layer (LAL). Modeling indicates that the polymer/LAL interface reaches above 800 °C during PLO, but the top surface of the PI remains below 120 °C. An array of indium zinc oxide (IZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) was fabricated on a polyimide substrate and photonically lifted off from the glass carrier. The TFT mobility was unchanged by PLO. The flexible TFTs were mechanically robust, with no reduction in mobility while flexed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number14
Journalnpj Flexible Electronics
Volume6
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ECCS-1710008. Portions of this work were conducted in the Minnesota Nano Center, which is supported by the National Science Foundation through the National Nano Coordinated Infrastructure Network (NNCI) under award number ECCS-1542202. Parts of this work were carried out in the Characterizations Facility, the University of Minnesota, which receives partial support from NSF through the MRSEC award number DMR-2011401. The authors would like to acknowledge B. Cote and the Ferry lab at the University of Minnesota for the use of their UV-Vis spectrometer. The authors acknowledge the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) at the University of Minnesota for providing resources for COMSOL Multiphysics simulations that contributed to the research results reported within this paper.

Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ECCS-1710008. Portions of this work were conducted in the Minnesota Nano Center, which is supported by the National Science Foundation through the National Nano Coordinated Infrastructure Network (NNCI) under award number ECCS-1542202. Parts of this work were carried out in the Characterizations Facility, the University of Minnesota, which receives partial support from NSF through the MRSEC award number DMR-2011401. The authors would like to acknowledge B. Cote and the Ferry lab at the University of Minnesota for the use of their UV-Vis spectrometer. The authors acknowledge the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) at the University of Minnesota for providing resources for COMSOL Multiphysics simulations that contributed to the research results reported within this paper.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

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