Large-area plastic nanogap electronics enabled by adhesion lithography

Abstract

Adhesion lithography enables coplanar nanogap electrode fabrication and allows for the realisation of nanoscale electronics manufacturing A collaborative team led by Thomas Anthopoulos from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology demonstrated a novel method for patterning coplanar electrodes with inter-electrode distances of less than 15 nm and arbitrarily large aspect ratios. This facile manufacturing method, called adhesion lithography, was used to fabricate a series of functional nanoscale electronic devices on various substrates. These flexible electronic devices, which are technologically relevant, included self-aligned-gate transistors, radio frequency diodes and rectifying circuits, multi-colour organic light-emitting diodes and multilevel non-volatile memory devices. Given its versatility in the fabrication of functional electronic devices and its solution-processing compatibility with a range of semiconductors and substrate materials, adhesion lithography is an attractive processing method for the high-throughput manufacture of large-scale flexible electronics at the nanoscale.