High-resolution orthogonal patterning of organics

有机电子学是现代科学技术的一个快速发展的分支，它可以用重量轻、价格低廉、机械柔性的有机半导体来补充传统的无机材料。有机电子材料的主要优势之一在于它们能够实现低温、高通量的器件制造。基于溶液的各种器件的制造，如有机发光二极管(LED)、场效应晶体管(FET)、太阳能电池和传感器，已被证明使用旋涂、喷墨打印和其他湿法打印技术。在过去的二十年里，材料合成、提纯和沉积技术的显著进步提高了薄膜的质量、均匀性和环境稳定性，但有机电子材料的化学加工仍然是需要克服的主要挑战之一。所谓化学处理，我们指的是任何化学处理，例如清洗、从溶液中沉积第二层以形成多层器件、以及沉积/显影用于光刻图案的抗蚀剂层。在其发展的几十年中，后者已经成长为半导体行业中占主导地位的图案化技术，原因有很多。它提供了令人印象深刻的高分辨率、精确配准、严格的关键尺寸控制、并行吞吐量和覆盖大面积的能力，如在特大床大小的玻璃平板上制造LCD背板所展示的那样。虽然尖端的光刻设备非常昂贵，但上一代技术是负担得起的，预计将对有机电子产生影响，特别是考虑到替代技术，如喷墨打印，在很大程度上仍未被大规模生产证明。该项目旨在利用正交光刻来创建独特的器件架构，以阐明有机电子材料的基本原理。关键的研究机会，如探测共轭聚合物单晶区中电荷传输的能力，将是拟议研究的重点。正交光刻是一种突破性的有机电子材料图案化工艺，它涉及到使用可溶于氟溶剂的抗蚀剂，这是由成功的材料世界网络项目产生的。正交光刻将被用来制造复杂的、多层有机半导体器件，而其他方法是不可能的。这将使新的基础研究能够阐明有机电子器件物理学的一些方面，而这些方面是在更传统的结构中无法研究的。

Organic electronics is a fast developing branch of modern science and technology that can complement conventional inorganic materials with lightweight, inexpensive, and mechanically flexible organic semiconductors. One of the key advantages of organic electronic materials lies in the low temperature, high-throughput device fabrication they enable. The solution-based fabrication of a variety of devices such as organic light emitting diodes (LEDs), field-effect transistors (FETs), solar cells, and sensors has been demonstrated using spin coating, ink-jet printing, and other wet printing techniques. While substantial improvements in materials synthesis, purification and deposition techniques over the past two decades enhanced film quality, uniformity, and environmental stability, the chemical processing of organic electronic materials remains one of the main challenges to be overcome. By chemical processing we mean any chemical treatment such as cleaning, depositing a second layer from solution to form multilayer devices, and depositing/developing resist layers for photolithographic patterning. The latter has, over the many decades of its development, grown into the dominant patterning technique in the semiconductor industry, for a number of important reasons. It offers an impressive combination of high resolution, precise registration, tight critical-dimension control, parallel throughput and the ability to cover large areas as demonstrated in the manufacture of LCD backplanes on glass sheets the size of a king bed. While cutting-edge photolithography equipment is very expensive, last generation technology is affordable and forecast to make an impact in organic electronics, especially given that alternative technologies such as inkjet printing are still largely unproven for large-scale manufacture.This project aims to leverage orthogonal lithography in order to create unique device architectures that will elucidate the fundamentals of organic electronic materials. Key research opportunities such as the ability to probe charge transport in a single crystalline domain of a conjugated polymer will be the focus of the proposed research. Orthogonal lithography, a breakthrough patterning process for organic electronic materials involves the use of resists soluble in fluorous solvents and resulted from a successful Materials World Network Project. Orthogonal lithography will be used to make complex, multilayer organic semiconductor devices not possible by other means. This will enable new fundamental studies to elucidate aspects of the physics of organic electronic devices which cannot be studies in more conventional structures.