The Semprius approach to the challenge of creating rugged, low cost, large area fabrication is by printing, in a deterministic and massively parallel manner, single crystal semiconductor layers or circuit elements over large areas.
This technology enables thin, lightweight and durable electronics to be fabricated at a very low cost. The resulting circuit devices have levels of performance that are orders of magnitude better than those based on amorphous silicon or organic semiconductors.
Well-defined surface chemical functionalities on the stamp and the silicon components bond these elements to the stamps. Contacting the inked stamp to a substrate coated with thin adhesive bonds the silicon to the substrate. Removing the stamp completes the transfer process. In this approach, tens of thousands of individual silicon ribbons, or device components (e.g. transistors, diodes, etc), can be transferred in a single step to a wide range of conventional or unusual substrates.
The innovation separates the high temperatures of silicon processing from the low temperature capabilities of plastic substrates. The two are combined using inherently cost effective printing processes. Material costs are low due to the additive nature of the printing and the use of high quality, but conventional, silicon source wafers.
The critical novelty of this innovation resides in the fact that all the demanding fabrication process steps necessary to fabricate high performance electronic systems are performed on the original mother substrate and not on the final device substrate. As a result, the inherent mechanical or chemical instabilities of the final receiving substrate do not limit the choice of semiconductor manufacturing processes for fabricating the devices. Conventional high temperature annealing processes, high resolution and high registration lithography patterning, and cleaning processes using strong acids/bases and other chemicals can be used.
This technology enables high performance flexible electronics, integrated devices composed of multiple layers or multiple substrates, large area transistor arrays and other new, important classes of electronic systems. The overall result is vast gains in performance for these types of devices at lower costs.
No other technology exists today which allows the production of flexible high speed semiconductors, easily allows the integration of high performance electronics with flexible substrates, and allows the integration of semiconductors produced on wafers of dissimilar base materials such as silicon and gallium arsenide.