A new laser Printing technique for the fabrication of thin film transistors

We present a new technique for the spatially selective deposition, or “printing”, of materials such as Si and Al. This transfer is effected by irradiating a hydrogenated amorphous silicon film deposited on a quartz substrate and coated with the material to be transferred with an excimer laser pulse. The resulting release and accumulation of hydrogen at the film/substrate interface generates pressures sufficient to propel the silicon, as well as any overlying material, onto an adjacent glass receptor wafer. Transient optical transmission measurements performed during the transfer of Si indicate that the amorphous film is melted by the laser pulse and breaks into droplets during ejection. These droplets travel towards the host substrate with a velocity of about 800 m/s and coalesce upon arrival. For fluences above 400 mJ/cm 2 , the resulting films adhere well to the receptors and can be smoothed using a second laser irradiation. We fabricated thin film transistors (TFTs) in the printed-and-smoothed Si using conventional lithography. The resulting devices show consistent switching behavior. We have also printed Si and Al lines with widths 5 to 15 µm by patterning the laser beam using a reflective grating mask defined on the target substrate. These lines are straight, show few discontinuities, and have sharp edges.