Roll Printed Electronics: Development and Scaling of Gravure Printing Techniques
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Roll Printed Electronics: Development and Scaling of Gravure Printing Techniques Alejandro De la Fuente Vornbrock Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California at Berkeley Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2009-191 http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-191.html December 29, 2009 Copyright © 2009, by the author(s). All rights reserved. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission. Roll Printed Electronics: Development and Scaling of Gravure Printing Techniques by Alejandro de la Fuente Vornbrock A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering - Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Vivek Subramanian, Chair Professor Tsu-Jae King Liu Professor David Dornfeld Fall 2009 Roll Printed Electronics: Development and Scaling of Gravure Printing Techniques © Copyright 2009 by Alejandro de la Fuente Vornbrock Abstract Roll Printed Electronics: Development and Scaling of Gravure Printing Techniques by Alejandro de la Fuente Vornbrock Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering ‐ Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California, Berkeley Professor Vivek Subramanian, Chair To realize the potential cost savings promised by printed electronics, high‐speed, large‐volume manufacturing methods must be established. Rotary printing techniques such as those used in the graphic arts are ideal candidates. However, very little research has been done on utilizing these techniques for printed electronics because digital processes such ink‐jet printing have offered researchers a low‐cost flexible solution for demonstrating the printability of their materials, despite the fact that these processes may be difficult to scale for large‐volume manufacturing. In this thesis, gravure, a printing process which offers the highest resolution, highest speed, and largest volume production in the graphic arts is demonstrated as a viable technique for printed electronics. In order to make laboratory‐scale research with this technique possible, a custom table‐top gravure printing press was designed. This press allows for small amounts of ink to be utilized during a print and enables multi‐layer prints with a registration accuracy not seen in conventional gravure printing presses and suitable for printed electronics. With this press, printing processes to deposit functional materials for printed circuits are investigated with a focus on developing process modules to manufacture fully printed organic thin film transistors. Considerable effort is made to establish processes to deposit metallic lines with feature sizes below 20 μm and a total surface roughness below 20 nm, uniform thin films of polymer dielectrics with thicknesses as low as 70 nm, and high performance polymer semiconductors. These processes are then integrated to manufacture capacitors suitable for integrated circuit components and organic thin film transistors with operating frequencies as high as 18 kHz. 1 Acknowledgements I have been told many times, always by older, much wiser people than me, that the best job is a job you enjoy, and that it is generally the people who make it enjoyable. Despite how challenging graduate school was at times, I can say I truly enjoyed it and I have a great group of friends and colleagues to thank for that. There gravure project in general was an immense effort which involved a great number of people. Steve Molesa was my big brother in lab during my first years here at UC Berkeley and in great part this project got off the ground thanks to him. Here is to Steve for all of those days on the ink-jet printers. Early in the project I had the fortune of working with two great undergraduates, Li Li and Vincent Liu, who at one point where dubbed the “mad CADders” for the endless hours we spent designing the gravure printer. Li then went on to help me out with gravure roll patterning, and was a big help in getting over some hurdles with exposure and development. Another undergraduate, Jose Covarrubias, followed up by helping scale gravure feature sizes. Finally, I had the privilege to work with Donovan Sung. Donovan made great strides in advancing our patterning capability by making contacts with the gravure industry and getting some great collaborations set up all on his own. I owe him thanks and respect for the tenacity he has shown in pushing the project forward, getting things done, and meeting deadlines, especially when that meant he was sleeping on the couch. Of course, there would be no gravure printer without a machine shop, and I owe special thanks to Warner Carlisle, Bob Amaral, Joe Gavazza, and Ben Lake. Joe was the head machinist on my project and was my main point of contact when technical issues came up. He was always helpful, patient and friendly. To Ben Lake, I owe the greatest thanks. From the very beginning he bent over backwards to give us a very competitive bid, to make sure our project was well taken care of, and to make adjustments when I came back (so many times) with design changes and outrageous requests. Not only has Ben an example of willingness to help, he’s become a close friend. Also, I want to thank everyone for letting me sit with them and bother them with all sorts of obliquely work-related questions during their lunch breaks, it was great fun and I learned a lot from them. There was also a great deal of external help on this project that I must recognize and thank. Soligie in Savage, MN funded much of the printer development and early print research. WRE/ColorTech here in Berkeley and in Greensboro, NC was very helpful in providing us with patterned rolls and contacts through the industry. Mark Richter from Rotadyne Decorative Technologies made this project come together, as his attention to detail and standards of quality gave us the best gravure rolls we have used. Dr. Guido Hennig started our collaboration with Daetwyler and put us in touch with Eric Serenius, John Fraser, Lynn Petterson, and Kent Seibel who have worked hard to bring us the next generation of high-resolution gravure rolls. Finally, Erika Hrehorova from Western Michigan and Jay Sperry from Clemson have generously shared their knowledge and expertise in conventional printing with me. For their involvement with my thesis work I would like to thank Professors David Dornfeld, Tsu- Jae King Liu, Costas Grigoropoulos, and Costas Spanos. Professor Dornfeld has been of great help throughout the years especially in helping improve the quality of our gravure rolls, generously letting me use his equipment, and giving me hours of very fruitful discussion. I owe everything I know about precision design to him. Professor King has been a beacon of excellence for me, a great host during my first year, and has been incredibly generous in heading my qual committee and reading my thesis on such short notice. My lab mates have been a great part of the experience, and in them I have found great role models and friends. Everyone there my first year was so inspirational, and I owe thanks to Steve Volkman, Paul Chang, Josei Chang, Frank Liao, Brian Mattis, Steve Molesa, David Redinger, Daniel i Huang, and Tuyen Le. I am quite sure I’ll never forget Steve Volkman’s creativity, Paul’s intelligence, and Josei and Frank’s efficiency. I also want to thank Shong Yin for being so generous and helpful these last few years, Huai-Yuan Tseng for the good times we spent printing together, and Dan Soltman for fruitful discussions on fluids. Through the years, though, I owe the most to Teymur Bakhishev, he has been a great lab mate and my best friend. I would also like to give thanks to my class-mates and friends; to John Secord, who was my roommate and close friend, and to Drew Carlson, Daniel Huang, Pankaj Kalra, Matthew Schoenecker, and Joe Makin, all of whom I learned a lot about how to be a better student and person from; to Donovan Lee for being such a good friend, for helping me so much in the last few months, and for motivating me to finish strong; to Raúl Aguilar, Eva Chapa, Armando Solar, Raúl Howe, and Homero Lara, for the laughs, the love, and support. I would have never gotten to Berkeley if it was not for a great undergraduate experience. I have to give special thanks to Prof. Richard Kiehl who took me under his wing since I was a sophomore at the University of Minnesota and taught me, much of it by personal tutelage, so much about science and research. My lab mates then were also very important and I owe thanks to Nikolai Nezlobin and Guanghua Xiao for being there to guide and help. I was also greatly inspired by my closest friends, Anthony Anderson and John McKeen, with whom I spent many hours talking about research and the wonders of science. Finally, I want to thank Prof. Anand Gopinath who had faith in me, and made me apply to the nation’s top schools and the NSF Fellowship. To my advisor, Prof. Vivek Subramanian, I owe my most sincere gratitude. He has always wished the very best for me, early on by encouraging me to think big and tackle problems that really matter, later, by teaching me that the purpose of the PhD is for me to exercise my leadership and take control over my own success, and throughout, by challenging me to strive for the highest level of quality.