'Hetero-print': A holistic approach to transfer-printing for heterogeneous integration in manufacturing

在微米和纳米尺度上快速发展的转印技术允许在几乎任何位置的各种衬底上制造高质量，高性能的器件。这种高度通用的能力具有高精度的机械拾取和放置组装技术，该技术利用软印章的粘合性能，该技术最近才进入电子和光子学领域。将这一令人兴奋和高度重要的发展置于背景下，在20世纪90年代，Whitesides（哈佛大学化学系），作为微加工和纳米技术的先驱，他建立了将自组装单层图案化的突破性概念，用于平版印刷、传感、医疗和制药应用，并将其称为微接触印刷。从这个基础上，该技术已经发展到更高水平的复杂性，其中微转移印刷最近提供了微LED阵列，例如，在柔性显示器中具有功能并提供柔性有机发光二极管（OLED）的无机类似物-这在以前被认为是非常具有挑战性的，如果不是不可能的话。在这个程序中，“异质打印”，我们的目标是通过建立，第一次和领先的国际竞争，对制造异质设备的新路线，包括由纯和/或混合无机/有机材料制成的集成系统，进一步迅速推动这一令人兴奋的领域。对这些混合方法的需求非常高，因为它开辟了有机材料可以与无机半导体技术协同提供的多功能器件的前景。Hetero-print的目标是提供微米和纳米转移印刷技术，用于多功能和可扩展的异质材料，结构和设备的制造。在实现这一目标的过程中，我们将为电子，光子和其他系统的制造引入重要的新功能，这些功能与已建立的半导体大规模制造方法（包括真空沉积和溶液处理）互补并协同。在这方面，转印是一种高度可扩展的技术，非常适合大批量生产，允许在单次运行中处理> 10，000个微型集成电路。许多光子器件的一个问题是成本，但微转印可以是经济的，单个印模的印刷周期数达到数万;该技术在材料浪费方面也是经济的，提供了一种以非常高的产量制造多阵列器件的方法。

The rapidly developing technique of transfer printing on the micro and nanoscales allows the manufacture of high quality, high performance devices on a wide range of substrates in almost any location. This highly versatile capability features a high-precision mechanical pick-and-place assembly technique that utilises the adhesive properties of soft stamps, and the technology has only recently broken into the field of electronics and photonics. Placing this exciting and highly important development into context, in the 1990s Whitesides (Harvard University Chemistry Dept.), a pioneer in microfabrication and nanotechnology, established the ground-breaking concept of patterning self-assembled monolayers for lithographic, sensing, medical and pharmaceutical applications and termed this micro-contact printing. From this foundation, the technique has evolved into much higher levels of complexity in which micro-transfer printing has recently delivered micro- LED arrays that, for example, feature in flexible displays and provide inorganic analogues of flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) - something that was previously thought to be extremely challenging if not impossible. In this programme, 'Hetero-print', we aim to rapidly push this exciting field further by establishing, for the first time and ahead of the international competition, new routes towards the manufacture of heterogeneous devices, consisting of integrated systems made from pure and/or hybrid inorganic/organic materials. The demand for these hybrid approaches is extremely high, because it opens up the prospect of multifunctional devices that organic materials can deliver in tandem with inorganic semiconductor technology. The ambition of Hetero-print is to deliver micro- and nano-transfer printing as the technology for the versatile and scalable manufacture of heterogeneous materials, structures and devices. In achieving this, we will introduce significant new capabilities for the manufacture of electronic, photonic, and other systems, which complement and are synergistic with those of established semiconductor mass-manufacturing methods including vacuum deposition and solution processing. In this respect, transfer printing is a highly scalable technique and perfectly suited to high volume manufacture, allowing >10,000 micro-sized integrated circuits to be processed in a single run. An issue with many photonic devices is cost, but micro-transfer printing can be economical with the number of print cycles from a single stamp running into the tens of thousands; the technique is also economical in terms of materials waste, providing a methodology to manufacture multiple-array devices in very high yield.