Dry transfer

Abstract: Silver nanowire films are promising alternatives to tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) films as transparent conductive electrodes. In this paper, we report the use of vacuum filtration and a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-assisted transfer printing technique to fabricate silver nanowire films on both rigid and flexible substrates, bringing advantages such as the capability of patterned transfer, the best performance among various ITO alternatives (10 Ω/sq at 85% transparency), and good adhesion to the underlying substrate, thus eliminating the previously reported adhesion problem. In addition, our method also allows the preparation of high quality patterned films of silver nanowires with different line widths and shapes in a matter of few minutes, making it a scalable process. Furthermore, use of an anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) membrane in the transfer process allows annealing of nanowire films at moderately high temperature to obtain films with extremely high conductivity and good transparency. Using this transfer technique, we obtained silver nanowire films on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate with a transparency of 85%, a sheet resistance of 10 Ω/sq, with good mechanical flexibility. Detailed analysis revealed that the Ag nanowire network exhibits two-dimensional percolation behavior with good agreement between experimentally observed and theoretically predicted values of critical volume. Open image in new window

Abstract: Graphene films grown on metal substrates by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method have to be safely transferred onto desired substrates for further applications. Recently, a roll-to-roll (R2R) method has been developed for large-area transfer, which is particularly efficient for flexible target substrates. However, in the case of rigid substrates such as glass or wafers, the roll-based method is found to induce considerable mechanical damages on graphene films during the transfer process, resulting in the degradation of electrical property. Here we introduce an improved dry transfer technique based on a hot-pressing method that can minimize damage on graphene by neutralizing mechanical stress. Thus, we enhanced the transfer efficiency of the large-area graphene films on a substrate with arbitrary thickness and rigidity, evidenced by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM) images, Raman spectra, and various electrical characterizations. We also performed a theoretical multisca...

Abstract: To make graphene technologically viable, the transfer of graphene films to substrates appropriate for specific applications is required. We demonstrate the dry transfer of epitaxial graphene (EG) from the C-face of 4H-SiC onto SiO(2), GaN and Al(2)O(3) substrates using a thermal release tape. Subsequent Hall effect measurements illustrated that minimal degradation in the carrier mobility was induced following the transfer process in lithographically patterned devices. Correspondingly, a large drop in the carrier concentration was observed following the transfer process, supporting the notion that a gradient in the carrier density is present in C-face EG, with lower values being observed in layers further removed from the SiC interface. X-ray photoemission spectra collected from EG films attached to the transfer tape revealed the presence of atomic Si within the EG layers, which may indicate the identity of the unknown intrinsic dopant in EG. Finally, this transfer process is shown to enable EG films amenable for use in device fabrication on arbitrary substrates and films that are deemed most beneficial to carrier transport, as flexible electronic devices or optically transparent contacts.

Abstract: We report high room-temperature mobility in single-layer graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) after wet transfer on SiO2 and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) encapsulation. By removing contaminations, trapped at the interfaces between single-crystal graphene and hBN, we achieve mobilities up to ∼70000 cm2 V-1 s-1 at room temperature and ∼120 000 cm2 V-1 s-1 at 9K. These are more than twice those of previous wet-transferred graphene and comparable to samples prepared by dry transfer. We also investigate the combined approach of thermal annealing and encapsulation in polycrystalline graphene, achieving room-temperature mobilities of ∼30 000 cm2 V-1 s-1. These results show that, with appropriate encapsulation and cleaning, room-temperature mobilities well above 10 000 cm2 V-1 s-1 can be obtained in samples grown by CVD and transferred using a conventional, easily scalable PMMA-based wet approach.