Fabrication of a conductive nanoscale electrode for functional devices using nanoimprint lithography with printable metallic nanoink

This paper proposes two metal patterning processes. In each process, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is used with commercialized particle-based silver nanoink which has appropriate properties for NIL. One process is a direct NIL process with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp; the other is a combined NIL and lift-off process. The direct NIL process is executed by using a xylene-absorbed PDMS stamp to decrease the curing time and minimize the residuals. A flexible PDMS stamp can also be wrapped around a quartz cylinder and used as a roll stamp to enlarge the patterned area. The direct NIL process successfully produced silver line patterns in the range of 200–300 nm, and the combined NIL and lift-off process successfully produced silver line patterns in the range of 15–60 nm.