Patterning and repair of transparent conductive oxide films with capillary printing (Invited Paper)

Thin films of Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCO) are used as electrodes or optical filters in display devices. While ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) usage is widespread today, alternative materials such as ZnO (Zinc oxide) or SnO2 (Tin dioxide) are promising, yet they remain challenging to pattern at the micrometer scale. Using the High Precision Capillary Printing (HPCaP) technology developped by Hummink, thin masking layers of polymers are printed on a Si sample before deposing a TCO layer by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). Removing the polymer yields the expected pattern with a pixel size smaller than 5 µm. Although not suitable for mass production, our approach shows promises for prototyping and repair of TCO-based display devices.