Design for high-yield manufacturing of printed circuits

新兴的印刷和柔性电子产品在定制消费、医疗和通信应用方面具有巨大的潜力。在实验室中，随着具有特定性能的设计材料的开发，它们的性能不断提高。对于这些技术来说，要弥补量产的差距，性能的一致性和高产量是必不可少的，但目前的进展主要集中在单个设备的性能上。一种电子器件，源门控晶体管（SGT），在萨里大学开发并获得专利，其工作原理与传统的薄膜晶体管不同。尽管在制造过程中可能发生显著的参数变化，但该器件具有产生均匀性能（特别是漏极电流）的潜力。sgt可以采用多种技术制造，原则上可以与传统晶体管相结合，以创建高性能印刷和大面积电子电路，而无需借助复杂的补偿电路来重复实现所需的特性。sgt将是大众市场低成本印刷电子产品常规操作的理想设备，其能源效率和性能的均匀性将超过相对较低的操作速度。该项目将是第一个系统研究器件和低成本电路，旨在利用sgt的均匀性优势，重点是有机材料。有机晶体管研究领域尤其具有吸引力，因为制造相对容易，丰富的设计材料-无论是现在还是未来的材料，灵活的衬底兼容性以及设备的低资本投资。然而，随着高性能半导体的发展，这项研究现在已经达到了一个平台，主要是通过合成改进的材料来实现重大的改进。目前，大批量生产的主要障碍是相对较低的产量和显著的性能差异，特别是在大范围内。通过解决这些挑战，我们将展示下一个重要的创新，为低功耗有机电子技术的制造带来高产量。项目合作伙伴NeuDrive（材料和设备）、Silvaco（模拟）和Altro（智能生活空间）将提供基本知识，以帮助实现项目目标：通过设备制造和表征验证理论SGT特性；优化设计和评估用源门控晶体管制成的电子电路块的性能；用数值模拟来支持我们的发现；创建设计指南和文档，促进这项新技术在学术和工业环境中的应用。CPI是研究先进电子制造工艺的国家机构，将分包部分制造工作，使研究人员能够专注于工艺开发、设备优化和电路设计。我们预计该项目的最大价值在于使各种用于可穿戴设备、传感器阵列和物联网（IoT）设备的印刷和柔性电子产品的高效大批量生产成为可能，这些都是研究界和工业界发展的优先事项。我们的贡献将允许从印刷和柔性电路中获得一致的性能，直接增加各种具有成本效益的应用的市场可行性。

Emerging printed and flexible electronics have great potential for customised consumer, medical and communication applications. In the lab they show ever-increasing performance as designer materials with specific properties are being developed. For these technologies to bridge the gap to volume production, consistency of performance and high production yield are essential, yet current progress has largely focused on individual device performance. A type of electronic device, the source-gated transistor (SGT), was developed and patented at Surrey and operates on different principles to a conventional thin-film transistor. This device has the potential to produce uniform performance (especially drain current) despite significant parameter variation which may occur during manufacturing. SGTs can be made in a variety of technologies and in principle can be combined with conventional transistors to create high performance printed and large area electronic circuits without resorting to complicated compensation circuitry to repeatedly achieve the desired characteristics. SGTs would be ideal devices for routine operations in mass-market, low-cost printed electronics, in which their energy efficiency and uniformity of performance would outweigh the comparatively low operating speeds.This project would be the first systematic study of both devices and low cost circuits deliberately designed to take advantage of the uniformity benefits of SGTs, with a focus on organic materials. The field of organic transistor research is particularly attractive due to the comparative ease of fabrication, rich palette of designer materials materials - both current and future, flexible substrate compatibility and low capital investment in equipment. This research has, however, now reached a plateau with the development of high-performance semiconductors, where significant improvements are likely to arise chiefly through the synthesis of improved materials. The principal hurdles for high-volume manufacturability are now the comparatively low yield and significant variations in performance, particularly over a large area. We will demonstrate the next important innovation, bringing high-volume yield to the manufacturing of low-power organic electronic technologies, by addressing these challenges.Project partners NeuDrive (materials and devices), Silvaco (simulation), and Altro (smart living spaces) will provide essential know how in order to help achieve the project aims: to verify theoretical SGT properties by device fabrication and characterisation; to optimise the designs and assess the performance of electronic circuit blocks made with source-gated transistors; to support our findings with numerical modelling; to create design guidelines and documentation, facilitating the uptake of this new technology in both the academic and industrial environments.CPI, the national facility for research into advanced manufacturing processes for electronics, will be subcontracted for part of the fabrication, allowing research staff to concentrate on process development, device optimisation and circuit design.We expect the greatest value of the project to be in making possible the efficient high volume manufacturing of a wide variety of printed and flexible electronics used for wearables, sensor arrays and internet-of-things (IoT) devices, which are priorities for development in both the research community and industry. Our contribution will allow consistent performance to be obtained from printed and flexible circuits, directly increasing the market viability of a variety of cost-effective applications.