Reliable Pattern Transfer Printing from Nanoscale to Sub-Micron Feature Size Using Various Polymeric Replica Materials

Nanotransfer printing (nTP) technology provides good reliability and compatibility with other lithography technologies in the fabrication of high-performance memory devices, wearable displays, and photovoltaics. To obtain various nanoscale to microscale patterns in nTP, the selection of replica materials is very important because of patternability from the contact effect between the target materials and desirable substrates. Here, we show a useful and practical thermally assisted nanotransfer printing (T-nTP) method to generate defect-free nano-/micro-structures on substrates using several polymeric replica materials as transfer-printing media. Specifically, we introduce several candidates for reliable pattern replication from Si master mold with various nano-to-micro patterns, such as poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), polystyrene (PS), and poly(4-vinlypyridine) (P4VP). Furthermore, the realization of highly ordered patterns of metal (Pt) and oxide (NiO, Li₂CO₃) on arbitrary substrate can be achieved by using duplicated soft materials through angled deposition and transfer-printing process. Moreover, we show well-defined nanostructures on the diverse surfaces including Cu foil, slippery glass, flexible PET, and curved surface of goggle. We expect that this pattern formation method using soft materials will be applied to advanced emerging devices with complex patterns.