Digital fabrication of - oxide electronics

The ink-jet printing technology is one of the most promising alternatives to photolithographic and masking technology allowing additive patterning of functional materials such as conductors, insulators, and semiconductors on a substrate. This approach enables the fabrication of cost-effective electronics. In particular, printable amorphous oxides have some advantages compared to other solution processable organic materials like atmospheric and temperature stability and relatively high field- effect mobility, which make them competitive candidates to be integrated in functional devices and smart systems. Here we report on the fabrication of basic electronic building blocks (e.g. a diode, resistor, capacitor) based on ink-jet printed amorphous oxides and metal contacts as active and passive device layers. Printed components are based on originally synthesized amorphous semiconductive oxides and metallic inks. After printing, low temperature sintering method developed by N ovaCentrix® (PulseForge®) was performed in order to form the device active and passive layers. This was accomplished by using proprietary high-intensity flash lamps at very short pulse durations allowing us to use a low-cost Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic film as the substrate material. Obtained results may open novel routes for the development of a next generation of Large Area Printed Electronics based on printed amorphous oxides.