UC Berkeley

Printed electronics can lower the cost and increase the ubiquity of electrical components such as batteries, sensors, and telemetry systems. Unfortunately, the advance of printed electronics has been held back by the limited minimum resolution, aspect ratio, and feature fidelity of present printing techniques such as gravure, screen printing and inkjet printing. Templated dry printing offers a solution to these problems by patterning nanoparticle inks into templates before drying.

This dissertation shows advancements in two varieties of templated dry nanoprinting. The first, advective micromolding in vapor-permeable templates (AMPT) is a microfluidic approach that uses evaporation-driven mold filling to create submicron features with a 1:1 aspect ratio. We will discuss submicron surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators made through this process, and the refinement process in the template manufacturing process necessary to make these devices. We also present modeling techniques that can be applied to future AMPT templates.

We conclude with a modified templated dry printing that improves throughput and isolated feature patterning by transferring dry-templated features with laser ablation. This method utilizes surface energy-defined templates to pattern features via doctor blade coating. Patterned and dried features can be transferred to a polymer substrate with an Nd:YAG MOPA fiber laser, and printed features can be smaller than the laser beam width.