Electrochemical replication and transfer for low-cost, sub-100 nm patterning of materials on flexible substrates.

The fabrication of high-resolution patterns on flexible substrates is an essential step in the development of flexible electronics, However, the patterning process on flexible substrates often requires expensive equipment and tedious lithographic processing. We report here an bottom-up patterning technique, termed electrochemical replication and transfer (ERT), which fabricates multi-scale patterns of a wide variety of materials by selective electrodeposition of target materials on a pre-defined template, and subsequent transfer of the electrodeposited materials to a flexible substrate, while leaving the undamaged template for reuse for over 100 times. The additive and parallel patterning attribute of ERT allows the fabrication of multi-scale patterns with resolutions spanning from sub-100 nm to many cm simultaneously, which overcomes the tradeoff between resolution and throughput of conventional patterning techniques. ERT is suitable for fabricating a wide variety of materials including metals, semiconductors, metal oxides, and polymers into arbitrary shapes on flexible substrates at a very low cost. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.