Adhesive lithography for fabricating organic electronic and optoelectronics devices.

Improvements in organic electronic materials have led to novel device applications, ranging from large-area flexible displays to lightweight plastic electronics. Progress on these applications would benefit from development of low-cost fabrication techniques for organic semiconductors. In this review, several fabrication processes based on adhesion force (i.e. van der Waals forces, thiol-metal reactions, and cold welding) are introduced. These patterning techniques are dry patterning techniques, i.e., the electronic materials are patterned from the raised regions of molds onto a substrate directly by additive or subtractive patterning methods. Patterning of organic small molecule, polymer thin films and metal electrodes by adhesive lithography is demonstrated. The operating properties of patterned organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) are comparable with the performance of devices fabricated by conventional evaporation deposition methods.