Understanding and developing capabilities for large area and continuous micro contact printing

Abstract

Micro contact printing is a high spatial resolution-patterning tool that can be used for printing on large and non-planar surfaces because of which it has begun to find important applications in printed organic electronics and fiber optics. However, problems like achieving precise alignment and registration, air bubble trapping and low production rate still remain unresolved. The goal of this thesis is to conceptualize and implement a low cost solution to these problems to be used by a nano-technology based company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In this dissertation, we first present an extensive literature review of soft lithography techniques, focusing more on micro-contact printing and critical factors for taking this technology from laboratory to commercial production. We then introduce another printing technique called flexography and discuss how this method when combined with micro contact printing can help in overcoming the above stated limitations and at the same time achieve high throughput rate at low cost. We propose a Flexography style micro contact printing mechanism with rotating cylindrical stamps enabling reel to reel processing. Finally, results from the experiments conducted to study the effect of parameters like ink concentration, speed and pressure on the print quality are documented.